| abstract |
When repairing soft tissue with a bone anchor instrument (such as re-attaching a torn rotator cuff tendon), the bone anchor instrument can be used to anchor the soft tissue to a bone region. The anchors inserted into the underlying bones may have one or more suture or wire lengths attached thereto, which may be independently tensioned to secure the soft tissue to the bone by selectively locking and unlocking the latched tensioning wheels from one another. The thread loading mechanisms may be used to guide the lengths of thread into and / or through the anchors before they are inserted into the bone, where such a mechanism may employ threading forceps configured to reconfigure from an expanded shape, by which the thread length can be easily passed to a low profile form, which fixes the thread lengths within the forceps. |