Novel Bendable Ring Curette for Endoscopic Transsphenoidal Surgery for Pituitary Tumors

In transsphenoidal resection of pituitary tumors, even dedicated instruments sometimes cannot readily reach the surgical fields and they interfere with the endoscope and other instruments, making instrumental manipulations difficult and often ineffective. To solve these problems, we invented a bendable ring curette to further improve maneuverability and accessibility.

The newly developed ring curette has a tip (14-mm long) that can bend spanning a range of 90°. Two types of ring curette are constructed; an upward-bending type, and a downward-bending type. We used the ring curette in 222 endoscopic pituitary surgeries.

The ring curette was easily operated with one hand, simply by manipulating the slider located at the handle to bend or straighten the tip. The bendable ring curette permits adequate access to sites where regular dedicated instruments such as the fixed-angle ring curette could not reach easily. The ring curette facilitated tumor resection as long as tumors were not too hard. Furthermore, the curette could be used as a dissector because the long tip provides greater horizontal and vertical forces.

Our newly developed bendable ring curette improves maneuverability and accessibility and can be efficiently used as a dissector in the far lateral and frontal sites, compared with the conventional fixed instrument.