It started with a trip to the emergency room in March 2020 for severe abdominal pain.
At first, Amy Wiesman, a consultant at Johnson & Johnson MedTech, assumed she had appendicitis. Even the nurses and physicians who first treated her thought her self-diagnosis was likely, given her symptoms. However, a CT scan showed Wiesman was actually dealing with a gastrointestinal disease called diverticulitis, which happens when little pockets in the wall of the colon (called diverticula) become injured or infected, causing inflammation, pain and often other symptoms.
“After those initial scans and diverticulitis diagnosis, I didn’t really know what to expect—and neither did my doctors,” says Wiesman. While some people have acute diverticulitis, which comes on suddenly and goes away with treatment, others have recurring episodes and develop chronic inflammation in their colon.
When Weisman left the hospital two days later, “There was no way of knowing for sure how things would play out for me,” she says. “I was told we’d have to wait and see.”
Facing a challenging road ahead
The medication that Wiesman was given treated the colon infection and reduced her symptoms, but had side effects, including nausea and vomiting. Yet as Wiesman healed, she remained hopeful that her diverticulitis would be acute.
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Then, a few months later, flu-like symptoms set in. She had a fever, chills, aches, and the same kind of stomach pain that sent her to the ER earlier that year. It was a diverticulitis flareup, which meant another round of medication.
The first year after her initial diagnosis, Wiesman had three diverticulitis flare-ups. Over the next three years, flare-ups increased to every other month. Life drastically changed. She had to skip family events and fun outings with friends. If she went out to dinner with her husband, she ordered soup while he ordered anything off the menu.
“For four years, it felt like I was always on medicine of some kind,” says Wiesman. “It didn’t matter how healthily I ate, how much I exercised or what I did to try to keep my diverticulitis at bay. It was clear my condition was worsening.”
Eventually, her physician recommended she consider surgery, which would involve removing the part of her colon affected by diverticulitis and reattaching the healthy parts.
The procedure came with significant risks. Wiesman’s surgeon told her they wouldn’t know how much of her colon they’d have to remove until they saw how much of it was diseased. If they had to remove a large section, there was a chance they wouldn’t be able to reattach her colon, and she’d need to wear a colostomy bag for the rest of her life. Still, moving forward with the surgery felt like the right option.
The device behind the recovery
During one of her pre-surgical appointments, Wiesman’s surgeon described how he would use the ECHELON CIRCULARTM Powered Stapler to connect the healthy sections of her colon once the section impacted by diverticulitis was removed. As a consultant at Johnson & Johnson MedTech, Wiesman was familiar with the device, which gave her peace of mind going into her procedure.
For years, circular staplers—commonly used in gastrointestinal tract surgeries, where there are tubes that need to be reconnected—were manual and had a traditional 2D staple form, similar to a tabletop stapler. Manual staplers require surgeons to apply significant force on the stapler’s firing trigger in order to staple and cut a patient’s tissue. Not only is this challenging for surgeons with less hand strength, but this force can also cause the stapler to move during this most critical part of the procedure, which can negatively impact the staple-line security and lead to a leak, which is devastating for patients. Fixed-compression staplers may result in over compression and unacceptable tissue damage.1*
“Our aim was to develop a circular device that delivers fewer leaks at the staple line,2|| reduces tissue damage3# and minimizes user errors,” says Prachi Rojatkar, Ph.D, Associate Project Director of Robotics and Digital Solutions at J&J MedTech, who led the development of the stapler, and is pictured above with Wiesman. The ECHELON CIRCULAR Powered Stapler was carefully designed to cater to all these unmet clinical needs by using unique technologies of 3D stapling to reduce leak rates, gripping surface technology to enable gentler handling4¶ of tissue. Indeed, more than 94% of surgeons reported that ECHELON CIRCULAR required significantly less force to fire compared to the manual stapler they commonly use.5†
When Rojatkar found out her colleague had surgery in which the ECHELON CIRCULAR Powered Stapler was used, it brought tears to her eyes.
“I was a new mom at the time, and seeing I was at a company that would allow me to feel a real connection to the work I was doing was very emotional,” says Rojatkar. “As an engineer, it’s math and physics—that’s what’s in your mind as you’re creating a device. When I found out that Amy’s surgeon had used the device, it made me feel like I had a real impact—like all the work, the setbacks, the accomplishments, the hardships were all worth it. That’s a feeling that’s hard to beat.”
A bright outlook
Amy's surgery was a success. She has six grandchildren now, all under 6 years old, and she spends as much time with them as she can. When she goes out to dinner with her husband, she can order whatever she wants.
“For four years, I just kind of pushed through life because I was either getting sick, in the middle of being sick, or just getting over being sick,” says Wiesman. “Now, I’m happy to say that life is back to normal.”
Any surgical procedures may present risks. Individual patient results may vary and are not indicative of all outcomes.
For complete product details, including warnings and precautions, see instructions for use at www.e-ifu.com
©Johnson and Johnson and its affiliates 2025. US_SRG_STAP_396712
References:
1.Son et al,. Compression injury of the circular stapler for gastrointestinal end-to-end anastomosis: preliminary in-vitro study. Ann Surg Treat Res. 2020; 99:72-81.
2.PRC082674 - Leak onset claims testing with predicate device PRC077848 - Leak Claims Testing.
3.Ethicon, Echelon Powered Circular Gentler Handling Completion Report. 1.18.2017. Windchill Document #PRC078621
4.Kawada, K. (2014). Risk factors for anastomotic leakage after laparoscopic low anterior resection with DST anastomosis. J surg endosc, 28:2988–2995.
5.Herzig DO, Ogilvie JW, Chudzinski A, Ferrara A, Ashraf SQ, Jimenez-Rodriguez RM, Van der Speeten K, Kinross J, Schimmelpenning H, Sagar PM, Cannon JA, Schwiers ML, Singleton DW, Waggoner JR, Fryrear R, Sylla P (2020) Assessment of a circular powered stapler for creation of anastomosis in leftsided colorectal surgery: a prospective cohort study. Int J Surg 84:140–146.
* In-vitro collagen tissue model with Ethicon Circular Staplers, 56 out of 136 collagen tissues exhibited overcompression with adjustable compression (CDH29A), vs. 48 out of 48 Medtronic circular staplers with fixed compression (EEA28MT), and 19 out of 232 collagen tissues exhibited unacceptable tissue damage with adjustable compression, vs. 29 out of 88 with Medtronic fixed compression (EEA28MT).
|| Benchtop testing in porcine tissue at ≤30mmHg (26mmHg average pressure experienced during intraoperative leak test), comparing Ethicon ECHELON CIRCULAR Powered Stapler (CDH29P) to Ethicon (CDH29A/ECS29A), Medtronic (EEA2835), Touchstone (CSC29) and Frankenman (HJW28WA) manual circular staplers, p<0.001.
# Benchtop testing on porcine colon, comparing Ethicon CDH29P to Medtronic Covidien EEA2835, p<0.001.
¶ Benchtop testing on porcine colon measuring compressive forces during closure, comparing means of 8.22 lbf for Ethicon CDH29P (n=15) to 13.25 lbf for Medtronic TRIEEA28MT (n=15), p<0.01.
† A Prospective, Multi-Center Evaluation of the ECHELON CIRCULAR Powered Stapler in Left-SidedColorectal Anastomoses, N=168, 129 (76.8%) strongly agree and 30 (17.9%) slightly agree.