US Patent Issued to OLYMPUS on Aug. 25 for "Overtube for endoscope" (Japanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Aug. 25 -- United States Patent no. 12,714,295, issued on Aug. 25, was assigned to OLYMPUS Corp. (Tokyo).

"Overtube for endoscope" was invented by Hideyuki Sato (Hachioji, Japan), Arimasa Sugimoto (Hachioji, Japan), Jun Wakasone (Wako, Japan), Ryu Kubo (Hachioji, Japan) and Tatsuya Higuchi (Chofu, Japan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An overtube for an endoscope includes: a tube body having a main lumen through which the endoscope is inserted and an air-supply lumen through which gas flows; a fixing balloon provided on an outer peripheral surface of a distal end of the tube body, expandable outward from the outer peripheral surface and contractible toward the outer peripheral...