Surgical Staplers

Abstract

Since the turn of the century, surgeons have been stimulated to develop devices to close off a hollow organ or to join two hollow organs. Early devices by the Hungarian surgeons Hültl and Petz and later by the Germans Friedrich and Neuffer were pioneering efforts. But the current prototypes of mechanical staplers originated from Russia in the 1950s.

Linear and circular staplers were engineered to perform standardized surgical procedures safely (e. g., gastrectomies and bowel resection). The American surgeon Ravitch subsequently brought these devices to the United States in the 1960s and focused on their improvement in terms of applicability and reliability. In collaboration with industry, preloaded plastic cartridges with double-staggered staple lines of different lengths were developed. In the mid-1970s, the first single-use stapling devices were developed and subsequently spread worldwide. Recently, mechanical staplers are used increasingly for closure of large vessels (vascular staplers), especially during laparoscopic surgery.