| 摘要 |
In the context of endoscopic electrosurgery, there is a need for a sufficiently robust, rigid, and preferably aspirating electrosurgical device that may be repeatedly flexed in the field to allow access to a wide array of remote tissues using a single device and, more preferably, during a single minimally invasive procedure. The present invention addresses this significant need by providing the distal portion of the elongate tubular member of an electrosurgical device with a bend region having a non-uniform flexural strength along its length, such that one may bend the tubular member at said bend region not only to an initial small radius bend, but subsequently rebend the distal portion to other angles as needed, with all bends occurring in the same distal region. A number of different mechanisms for reducing the flexural strength in the bend region are disclosed herein, including, for example, notching the tube in the bend region, annealing the tube in the bend region, reducing the wall thickness in the bend region, utilizing a material having lower flexular and/or yield strength to form the bend region, utilizing a small diameter elongate conductive element having negligible rigidity, such as a wire, and combinations thereof. |
