Atraumatic Catheter Tip with Variable Wall Thickness
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current intracorporeal medical devices lack effective solutions for delivering medical devices to target locations within the body while minimizing tissue damage and ensuring secure retention and retrieval of the devices.
Innovation Solution
A delivery catheter with a distal tip that transitions from a folded to an unfolded configuration, featuring increased wall thickness and a rounded edge, allowing for the secure delivery and retrieval of medical devices while preventing collapse during repositioning, and made from a soft, low durometer polymer to reduce trauma to vessel walls.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Object-affected harmful factors
If the distal tip is made soft and flexible to minimize tissue damage, then trauma to vessel walls is reduced, but the tip may collapse during retrieval and repositioning
Solution Approach 1:
The catheter incorporates a distal tip with different material properties than the main body. The distal tip uses a softer polymer with lower durometer to minimize tissue trauma, while the main body uses a harder polymer for structural support. This local differentiation allows the soft tip to reduce harm to vessels while the harder main body prevents collapse during manipulation.
Solution Approach 2:
The catheter is constructed as a composite structure combining two different polymers: a softer distal tip portion and a harder main body portion. This composite material approach enables the device to simultaneously exhibit trauma-reducing softness at the tip and structural rigidity in the main body, resolving the contradiction between minimizing tissue damage and preventing collapse.
2Reliability
If the distal tip is made rigid to prevent collapse during retrieval, then structural stability is improved, but tissue damage increases
Solution Approach 1:
The catheter incorporates a distal tip with different material properties than the main body. The distal tip uses a softer polymer with lower durometer to minimize tissue trauma, while the main body uses a harder polymer for structural support. This local differentiation allows the soft tip to reduce harm to vessels while the harder main body prevents collapse.
Solution Approach 2:
The catheter is constructed as a composite structure combining two different polymers: a softer distal tip portion and a harder main body portion. This composite material approach enables the device to simultaneously exhibit trauma-reducing softness at the tip and structural rigidity in the main body, resolving the contradiction between minimizing tissue damage and preventing collapse.
3Reliability
If the outer diameter of the distal tip is increased to improve device retention, then retention capability is enhanced, but the device cannot pass through narrow introducers
Solution Approach 1:
The distal tip is designed with dynamic geometry that can change between two states: a compressed configuration with smaller outer diameter for introduction through narrow sheaths, and an expanded configuration with larger outer diameter for improved device retention at the target site. This dynamic transformation allows the tip to adapt its size based on operational requirements.
Solution Approach 2:
The distal tip is divided into multiple segments or layers that can move relative to each other, enabling the tip to transition between compressed and expanded states. This segmentation allows the outer diameter to be reduced for introduction while maintaining the ability to expand for retention.
Data Source
Figure 1
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Figure 3A~3B
AI summary
A delivery catheter includes a soft, atraumatic distal tip. The distal tip is configured to transition from a folded configuration to an unfolded configuration during delivery of a medical device. A wall thickness of the distal tip may be increased such that the distal tip is biased to remain in the unfolded configuration after delivery. Additionally, the increased wall thickness in a selected region of the distal tip may cause the distal tip to resist and/or prevent collapse of the distal tip during retrieval and/or repositioning of the medical device when the medical device comes into contact with a distal end of the catheter. The distal edge of the distal tip may be rounded so as to prevent the distal tip from damaging tissue during advancement of the catheter to a target location within a patient's body.