VANCOUVER Optical Forceps for Pediatric Bronchoscopy

In infants and toddlers, bronchial foreign bodies are often too small to be removed with standard optical peanut forceps. Most commonly, very troublesome foreign bodies are nut fragments, only around 2 mm diameter, lodged distally in a segmental bronchus, and often surrounded by granulation tissue. Before the development of the VANCOUVER forceps, these small bronchial foreign bodies could only be removed using a small, slim non-optical peanut forceps (without the benefits of distal illumination) or an optical bronchial biopsy forceps (which tends to take a bite out of soft foreign bodies).

The new VANCOUVER forceps is a marriage of the small, slim peanut forceps with a rod-lens telescope. It provides excellent visualization and the ability to gently grasp the foreign body beyond its equator, in order to facilitate rapid, safe and complete removal of the foreign body. It can be used through a bronchoscope as small as 3.5 mm diameter. It has been used successfully to remove a small piece of a crayon and a small nut fragment from segmental bronchi and is anticipated to become an important addition to the pediatric bronchoscopists instrumentarium.

The VANCOUVER forceps should help make removal of smaller bronchial foreign bodies faster and safer and might help prevent the need for thoracotomy and bronchotomy in infants and toddlers.

Let yourself be amazed by the excellent quality of the KARL STORZ range of rigid bronchoscopes and corresponding optical forceps.