Zimmer Spine, Inc.

University of Minnesota

University of Washington

David Nuckley

Hugh D Hestad

Jason Piehl

Jeremy Jon Lemoine

Krishna C Vedula

David Wayne Polly, Jr

Arthur Guy Erdman

Per G Reinhall

David W Polly

Evan Mark Gustafson

Wei-Chih Wang

Timothy J Pommer

Charles Gerald Tan Ledonio

David Linders

Jeremy Lemoine

A uniplanar bone anchor including a housing and a bone screw is provided. The lower region of the housing defines mating elements that mate with engaging elements on the bone screw to limit movement of the housing relative to the bone screw to a single plane.

Uniplanar bone screw

A spinal probe comprises a handle, a shaft coupled to the handle and a force sensor to detect forces applied to a tip of the shaft. A controller that executes a predictive algorithm to predict whether or not the tip of the shaft is going to breach a cortex of a pedicle based on the detected forces. The controller may be embedded within the spinal probe or external within a computer or other device coupled to the probe by a data acquisition component.

Spinal probe with tactile force feedback and pedicle breach prediction

A clinical sensing glove system to quantify force, shear, hardness, etc., measured in manual therapies is disclosed. A sensor is disposed in a clinical glove. The sensor undergoes micro-bending, macro-bending, evanescent coupling, a change in resonance, a change in polarization, a change in phase modulation, in response to pressure/force applied. The amount of micro-bending, macro-bending, evanescent coupling, change in resonance, change in polarization, and/or change in phase modulation is proportional to the intensity of the pressure/force. A clinician can quantitatively determine the amount of pressure, force, shear, hardness, rotation, etc., applied.

Clinical force sensing glove

A pedicle screw driver bit includes an elongated shank and a head. The shank includes a plurality of threads. The head is connected to one end of and configured to rotate relative to the shank. The head is configured to be received by a tulip connected to a pedicle screw. The threads of the shank are configured to engage a plurality of threads of the tulip such that when the shank is rotated the tulip is drawn into engagement with the head such that the shank, the head, the tulip, and the pedicle screw are substantially prevented from rotating relative to one another.

Stripped pedicle screw driver bit

A number of spinal stabilization devices are disclosed for aligning and fixing vertebrae during surgery, e.g. to facilitate accurate placement of pedicle screws. One stabilization device includes a pair of spiked rails biased to clamp shut and thereby passively engage a number of vertebrae. Another stabilization device includes a tie-rod that connects two or more fiducial markers, each of which is connected to a vertebra, to stabilize the vertebrae including and between each vertebra to which the markers are attached.

Intraoperative spinal stabilization

Growing community of inventors

Minneapolis, MN, United States of America

David Nuckley