Microextrusion Methods for Medical Catheter Packaging

Microcatheter for interventional cardiovascular and neurovascular procedures that can navigate complex tortuous anatomy while maintaining torquability, pushability, and structural integrity. The catheter has a long (1000 mm) flexible section with an interrupted tubular reinforcement wall called a skeleton. The skeleton has large cutouts that allow high flexibility. An inner liner surrounds the skeleton. To prevent bulging or breakage during inflation, a temporary heat shrinkable outer tube is used during liner expansion. This closes the cutouts and reinforces the skeleton. After cooling, the outer tube is removed. This allows very high cutaway ratios in the skeleton to maximize flexibility.

Source

Microcatheter for assisting guidewire placement and exchange in peripheral and coronary blood vessels. The catheter has a tapered head end connected to a tube body. The head end has a nonlinear taper and helical outer surface to improve vessel penetration and positioning. The tapered head and tube body provide overall support, twist control, pushability, and head penetration. The catheter also has a hand-grip connector with a non-slip groove for comfortable operation. The catheter improves vessel crossing ability and reduces trauma compared to existing catheters.

Source

Microcatheter for interventional procedures like embolization and contrast injection that improves pushability, flexibility, torsion control, and high pressure resistance compared to existing microcatheters. The microcatheter has a three-layer structure with a braided middle layer and smooth inner layer. The outer layer has four sections with decreasing hardness and thickness from proximal to distal ends to enable better pushability at the proximal section and flexibility at the distal section. This allows easier maneuvering of the catheter through the vasculature. The different outer layer sections are welded together for a smooth transition. The braided middle layer and smooth inner layer provide additional support and pushability. The catheter can be manufactured by heat-shrinking or co-extruding the layers.

Source

Microcatheter for interventional cardiology procedures like treating chronic total occlusions (CTOs) in coronary arteries. The microcatheter has a unique design that provides strong pushability, flexibility, and bending resistance for navigating through small vessels and CTOs. It has a tube body with an inner layer, spring layer, braided layer, and polymer layer. The braided layer extends into the tapered tip section, improving pushability and bending resistance there. The elastic modulus of the tip gradually decreases from the body to improve flexibility. This configuration allows the microcatheter to advance over guide wires and support them through CTOs.

Source

Micro-cutting machine for producing flexible and torquable catheters and guidewires with precise control over dimensions and material properties. The machine cuts cylindrical stock material into pairs of opposing beams to form products like catheters and guidewires that are both flexible and torquable. The cuts are made in a rotating pattern to avoid bias. The machine can cut non-conductive materials like plastics. The cuts are made using real-time imaging instead of electromagnetic sensing to account for material variations. This allows consistent product quality. The cuts are also made in a controlled variance to further reduce bias. The machine uses a quality control technique to monitor cut quality instead of every cut.

Source

Catheter design for minimally invasive procedures that can navigate narrowed blood vessels and lumens more easily compared to existing catheters. The catheter has a reduced diameter, flexible wall, and helical threads on the outer surface. The threads engage with the vessel walls to advance the catheter into narrowed areas. The catheter can be guided over a guide wire and rotated to engage and traverse tight vessels. The flexible wall allows the catheter to follow a curved path through tortuous vessels. The reduced diameter allows the catheter to fit into smaller spaces.

Source

Multi-lumen catheter design for intraluminal procedures in small body vessels like below-the-knee vessels in humans. The catheter has a flexible main body and an inner tubular member with a higher elastic modulus. The higher modulus inner tube provides pushability while the flexible outer body allows maneuverability in curved vessels. The inner tube can be coextruded with the outer body or inserted later. The outer body can have one or more stiffening members or a braided reinforcement.

Source

Catheter for cardiac procedures like pacemaker implantation and tachycardia treatment that can be used with standard-sized guiding catheters while maintaining hardness and operability. The catheter has a tube with an electrode at the tip and a guide wire inserted just at the tip. In the non-guide wire section, the tube has a smaller outer diameter than the guide wire section. It uses a two-layer construction with a metal pipe coated in synthetic resin, or a PEEK pipe coated in polyethylene, to maintain rigidity without thickening the entire catheter.

Source

Micro-machining catheters and guidewires with improved flexibility and torquability for intravascular surgery. The micro-cutting technique allows precise machining of cylindrical stock material like metal wire or polymer tubing into products like guidewires and catheters. The cuts are made in a rotating pattern to avoid bias and improve flexing. The micro-cutting machine can handle non-conductive materials like plastic. This enables customization of product dimensions and materials for specific applications.

Source

Micro-cutting machine and method to produce highly flexible and torquable catheters and guidewires for medical procedures that can be used in intravascular surgery. The machine allows precise micro-cutting of cylindrical stock materials like metal wires and polymer tubing to create flexible products with torqueability. The machine makes pairs of cuts on the stock material to form beams with reduced thickness at the sides. This increases flexibility while retaining torqueability compared to single cuts. The cuts are made in a rotating pattern to avoid bias. The machine uses real-time imaging to accurately sense the stock material diameter and make cuts based on that, rather than relying on conductivity sensing. This avoids problems with inconsistent stock diameters. The cuts are also verified after some to ensure quality.

Source

A catheter design with improved flexibility and reduced kinking for angioplasty procedures. The catheter has a proximal shaft section with a kink-resistant shape, a longer tension-relaxation section, and a fixed bend in the hypotube. It also has an intermediate shaft section with a hypotube that gradually increases flexibility towards the tip. This avoids excessive springiness and kinking while retaining the benefits of hypotubes. The proximal section uses a composite tube configuration with an outer tube, blade, and inner tube. The hypotube section has a spiral cut to increase flexibility. The distal section has a bladed base end instead of a hypotube.

Source

Microcatheter design for improved flexibility and kink resistance in narrow, curved vessels like brain blood vessels. The catheter has a shaft with progressively softer sections in the proximal, intermediate, and distal regions. An inner layer extends through all sections. An intermediate reinforcing layer is added between the inner layer and outer layer in the proximal section. The outer layer has three sections: an inner layer (first outer layer) covering the inner and reinforcing layers, a middle layer (second outer layer) covering just the inner layer in the intermediate section, and a tip section (third outer layer) covering just the inner layer in the distal section. This gradual hardness progression provides flexibility in the distal section while preventing kinking. A hard contrast marker and reinforcing braid are placed between the marker and distal section to prevent interference.

Source

Medical devices like catheters with improved flexibility, strength, and other properties. The devices use micromachined components to balance these requirements. The catheters have features like micromachined hypotubes with radial slots, micromachined compression rings, micromachined marker bands, and micromachined hypotubes within guidewire lumens. These micromachined components allow flexibility improvements without sacrificing strength or other device performance.

Source

Medical catheter design with separated sections for better visualization and access during procedures. The catheter has a proximal section for visualization and a distal section for accessing the target area. The proximal section has features to aid in guiding and imaging, like markers or lumens, while the distal section has a smaller diameter for easier maneuvering through narrow passages. This separates the functions of visualization and access into dedicated sections for improved performance during procedures.

Source

A catheter with a tapered distal tip to make insertion easier and reduce injury risk. The distal tube portion of the catheter has a reduced outer diameter compared to the proximal portion. This taper is achieved by stretching or drawing the catheter material to increase length while reducing diameter through lateral contraction. The entire catheter is made of the same material and only deformed by extension, avoiding the need for connections between different materials. The tapered tip allows easier insertion into narrow spaces while reducing risk of vessel perforation or dura injury.

Source

Microcatheter with a flexible, self-forming distal end that can easily navigate curved blood vessels like cerebral arteries. The catheter has a braided metal wire reinforced core sandwiched between two lower modulus polymers. This configuration allows the outer polymers to deform beyond their elastic limit while the metal wire core remains stiff. This permanent deformation of the outer polymers creates a permanently formed, flexible distal end that can conform to the curvature of vessels.

Source

A medical catheter shaft design that reduces friction, improves visibility, and simplifies manufacturing compared to conventional catheters. The shaft has a thin, non-uniform Teflon coating that reduces friction with vessel walls without adding significant profile. The coating extends 360 degrees around the shaft but can also have gaps to maintain lubricity. The shaft also has a radiopaque marker placed inside a tapered section near the distal balloon. This allows the marker to be larger and more visible without obstructing catheter insertion. The marker can also act as a stopper to prevent damage to the balloon during aspiration. The marker placement simplifies manufacturing by avoiding small markers that can be difficult to see inside blood vessels.

Source

Catheter with improved safety and flexibility for insertion into complex, winding blood vessels and ureters. The catheter has a thin-diameter body with a narrowed gap between cut sections near the tip. This allows a smaller diameter at the tip compared to the base. The cut sections reduce the diameter gradually towards the tip instead of abruptly transitioning from a thick to thin section. This prevents damage to fragile vessels and ureters when inserting a catheter with a thin diameter at the tip. The cut sections also enable customizing the catheter diameter at the tip without separately manufacturing thinner catheters.

Source

A composite drug delivery catheter with an outer member for handling and implantation flexibility, and an inner member for drug delivery with a smaller diameter. The interstitial space between the outer and inner members provides flexibility for implantation and adjustment. The catheter can also have a floppy distal extension for navigating tortuous paths. The composite design allows handleability and implantation with the outer member, while the inner member has a smaller diameter for microquantity drug delivery.

Source

A catheter segment design that allows the catheter to be flexible and easily steerable without needing a guide wire. The segment has a polymeric tube with a lumen for fluid flow, and inside the tube wall is a straight, plastically deformable guide member. The guide member is radially spaced from the tube axis. It can be bent beyond a limit around a perpendicular axis. This allows the catheter tip to be shaped by bending the guide member, which holds its shape when deformed instead of returning like a coil or braid would.

Source