Technical feasibility of a newly designed bendable forceps for difficult endoscopic tissue samplings (with video)

Biopsies with conventional forceps beyond the operating range are difficult and cumbersome. Thus, we developed a new bendable forceps for improved access to gastrointestinal lesions and evaluated its technical feasibility. A bendable forceps was constructed with two channels and a two-stage knob. The bending motion-related structures were designed to improve the range of motion. For the evaluation of the forceps, we used 2 gastrointestinal simulators: an ex vivo porcine model, and an in vivo porcine model with some difficult endoscopic biopsy cases. All evaluations were performed by 5 expert endoscopists and an expert pathologist. Compared with the conventional forceps, the bendable forceps had greater efficacy in the simulator (6.2 ± 0.4 vs. 1.96 ± 0.2, p