ALEXANDRIA, Va., Aug. 26 -- United States Patent no. 12,396,885, issued on Aug. 26, was assigned to Alcon Inc. (Fribourg, Switzerland).
"Retractable backflush instrument" was invented by Reto Gruebler (Greifensee, Switzerland), Simon Nicola Kunz (Zurich), Niccolo Maschio (Winterthur, Switzerland) and Christoph Siegenthaler (Eschenz, Switzerland).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Certain embodiments provide an apparatus comprising a hand-piece, an outer tube coupled to the hand-piece, an inner tube housed within the outer tube and having a distal end coupled to a soft tip and a proximal end coupled to an adapter, a proximal end of the adapter coupled to a distal end of a valve, the valve slidably ...