Surgical instrument for applying metal staples to organs and tissues and for simultaneous division thereof

Claim 1

In a surgical instrument for suturing and dividing tissue, a pair of means one of which is an elongated staple-inserting means and the other of which is an elongated clinching means, connecting means operatively connected with said pair of means for interconnecting them for movement one with respect to the other to and from an operative position where the staple-inserting means and clinching means clamp between themselves tissue which is to be operated on, said staple-inserting means carrying two rows of staple-driving members for driving staples toward said clinching means while the latter carries in alignment with said rows of staple-driving members a pair of anvil members for engaging the tips of the driven staples after they penetrate through the tissue and for bending said tips, said rows of staple-driving members defining between themselves a space having a given length and said clinching means carrying between said anvil members an elongated elastic member aligned with and being at least as long as said space while having a surface directed toward said space when said pair of means are in said operative position thereof, elongated actuating means supported by said staple-inserting means for movement in a given direction therealong to displace said staple-driving members toward said clinching means, and a rotary knife disk supported by said elongated acutating means for rotation about an axis extending centrally through and being perpendicular to said disk while also extending transversely with respect to said given direction, with said disk being situated at a location where said disk will move with said actuating means along said space between said rows of staple-driving members while said disk has a diameter great enough for penetrating at an outer peripheral cutting edge of said disk into said elastic member which is situated between said anvil members, said disk having only a relatively small portion of said peripheral cutting edge penetrating into said elastic member at any given instant and said disk rotating in response to frictional engagement with said elastic member while travelling along and penetrating into the latter for progressively cutting with a slicing action cleanly through tissue clamped between said pair of means.