US Patent Issued to CILAG GMBH INTERNATIONAL on July 1 for "Surgical tools with occluded blade" (Ohio Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 3 -- United States Patent no. 12,343,004, issued on July 1, was assigned to CILAG GMBH INTERNATIONAL (Zug, Switzerland).

"Surgical tools with occluded blade" was invented by Andrew Crews (Cincinnati), Michael Chirumbolo (Cincinnati), John A. Hibner (Mason, Ohio) and Rudolph H. Nobis (Mason, Ohio).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Surgical tools that are capable of both manipulating a needle and cutting surgical thread during a suturing operation can sometimes be problematic due to inadvertent severing of the surgical thread. Surgical tools capable of exposing a bladed cutting surface only when severing of surgical thread is desired can substantially alleviate this issue. Suc...