Patient limb positioning apparatus

Claim 1

Apparatus useful in srugery for holding part of a patient's body such as a limb, portion of a limb, extremity, organ or tissue in a number of different positions required by a surgeon for the performance of a surgical procedure at a surgical site, comprising: (a) grasping means for grasping a part of a patient's body; (b) a plurality of positioning members adapted to interconnect said grasping means to a supporting point such that the body part grasped by the grasping means can be moved to any position relative to said supporting point within a predetermined space, while locating said positioning members so as to avoid obstacles around the surgical site and to avoid obstruction of the surgical site, each of said positioning members comprising: (i) selectably positionable joints, connected to said positioning member, (ii) attaching means connected to said selectably positionable joints for attaching each said positioning member to another positioning member or to said grasping means, or to said supporting point, (iii) locking means for locking said selectably positionable joints in a selected position, and (iv) actuation means for actuating said locking means in response to a first control signal, and for unlocking said locking means in response to a second control signal; and (c) signal generating means for enabling an operator to generate said first control signal and said second control signal for (i) each said positioning member individually, and (ii) each said positioning member of a predetermined group of said positioning members so that said operator can selectively lock or unlock all of said positioning members of said group simultaneously.