US Patent Issued to OLYMPUS on July 15 for "Needle holder for endoscope and operating method of suture needle" (Japanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,357,300, issued on July 15, was assigned to OLYMPUS Corp. (Tokyo).

"Needle holder for endoscope and operating method of suture needle" was invented by Kosuke Oka (Tokyo), Masatoshi Tonomura (Koganei, Japan) and Kunihide Kaji (Hachioji, Japan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A needle holder includes a sheath, a grasper capable of grasping a target object, an operation portion capable of opening and closing the grasper, and an operation wire. The operation portion includes a main body, a slider, and an elastic member that is elastically deformable depending on an opening and closing position of the grasper. The slider is connected to the gra...