US Patent Issued to The Regents of the University of California on July 1 for "Systems and methods for accessing a site within the body" (California Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 3 -- United States Patent no. 12,343,493, issued on July 1, was assigned to The Regents of the University of California (Oakland, Calif.).

"Systems and methods for accessing a site within the body" was invented by Ian Metzler (San Francisco), Thomas Chi (San Francisco), Pierre Nedelec (Oakland, Calif.), Woojoo Kim (Oakland, Calif.) and Anshal Gupta (Oakland, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "In one embodiment, an expandable access sheath including a planar sheet of material that is configured to be rolled up around an inflatable balloon, the sheet comprising an inner surface, an outer surface, a leading edge, a trailing edge, a proximal edge, and a distal edge, the s...