At the instant an instrument punctures tissue, delay in the physician's reaction causes a short period of unbalanced force and subsequent device acceleration further into the patient. This “over-puncture” may lead to potentially catastrophic adjacent tissue damage. Surgical puncture devices requiring a higher insertion force experience a greater acceleration at puncture and result in up to twice as many patient injuries [1]. A novel force-controlled tip retraction mechanism has been previously proposed. This mechanism employs a sharp tip to minimize insertion force and subsequent acceleration upon puncture. In addition, the mechanism reacts to the sudden drop in resistive force upon puncture and retracts the device tip, actively opposing its forward acceleration.
The original mechanism demonstrated potential to decrease the risk of over-puncture in a variety of access procedures, and future development steps were determined. The flexural mechanism required further conceptualization and iteration as well as design for manufacture....
