The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Sep. 10, 2002
Filed:
Jul. 16, 2001
James D. Ralph, Oakland, NJ (US);
Steven Tatar, Montvale, NJ (US);
Thomas J. Errico, Summit, NJ (US);
Third Millennium Engineering, LLC, Summit, NJ (US);
Abstract
A surgical treatment for restoring a proper anatomical spacing and alignment to vertebral bones of a scoliosis patient including: determining an angular misalignment associated with at least one pair of adjacent vertebral bones; sequentially inserting and removing a series of progressively wider cylindrical spacer elements into the corresponding intervertebral space between the at least one pair of adjacent vertebral bones until the proper anatomical spacing between the pair of adjacent vertebral bones is restored; for each intervertebral space, inserting a diametrically tapered cylindrical spacer element into the intervertebral space between the corresponding pair of adjacent vertebral bones; and rotating the diametrically tapered cylindrical spacer element such that the rotational orientation of the tapered cylindrical spacer element introduces the appropriate counter offset to the intervertebral space of the previously misaligned scoliotic vertebral bones, thereby restoring the proper anatomical alignment of the vertebral bones.