surgical clip and applicator

During laparoscopic surgery, there is often a requirement to clamp tissue together. Conventional U-profiled surgical clips in current practice are typically used to ligate small tubular structures such as blood vessels. However, surgeons routinely deploy such clips to reinforce large folds of reconstructed tissue (such as staple lines formed during bariatric surgery) in an attempt to reduce bleeding and promote hemostasis.

Despite clinical adoption of this technique, it is often unsuccessful in preventing bleeding which can have catastrophic consequences for patients. In collaboration with a laparoscopic surgeon - Mikael Sodergren - I developed an elongated T-profiled surgical clip capable of effectively compressing large areas of tissue. 

In collaboration with a design consultancy, we developed a new laparoscopic clip applicator that allows an elongated clip to be passed through a 12mm trocar port, rotated to an arbitrary angle and clamped around tissue folds. For this project, we received an Imperial BRC grant and filed a provisional patent application through Imperial Innovations.