Pinching device for surgical purposes

Claim 1

A surgical clamp comprising, in combination: a pair of elongate supporting parts disposed in spaced opposition and a pair of jaw elements disposed in parallel opposition, each jaw element merging with one end of a corresponding supporting part; and means for freely guiding said jaw elements for manual movement toward and away from each other and for frictionally holding the jaw members clamped upon an anatomical member such as a blood vessel with and in response to a pressure which has been manually established while allowing subsequent manual release of such frictional holding without first closing the jaw elements further, said means comprising a circular pin anchored to and upstanding from one of said supporting parts and passing through the other supporting part, an elongated, circular sleeve carried by said other supporting part and through which said pin passes with a minor amount of clearance, said sleeve having mutually inwardly facing inner surfaces, one adjacent each of its opposite ends, which frictionally engage and hold onto said pin due to slight relative tilting between said sleeve and pin caused by the pressure exerted by said jaw elements on the anatomical member, and a second upstanding pin anchored on one of said supporting parts and passing through an opening in the other part for preventing relative rotation of the parts about the axis of the pin first mentioned while permitting said slight relative tilting, said supporting parts having portions on that side of said first pin remote from said jaw elements which are spaced apart from each other sufficient in that region adjacent said sleeve and even when the jaw elements are engaged together to permit insertion of a finger therebetween to allow said sleeve to be forcibly slid along said first pin despite said frictional engagement and thereby allow the frictional holding between said first pin and said sleeve to be released without first closing the jaw elements further.