Break-Away Catheter Tip for Guidewire Passage
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Solution Overview
Problem
Chronic medical tube drainage catheters often experience blockage due to proteinaceous or mineral debris, making routine exchange difficult as guide wires cannot pass through the distal end, and retention sutures can become compacted, impeding guidewire passage.
Innovation Solution
A medical tube drainage catheter with a break-away tip that can alter its configuration to accommodate a guide wire, featuring tapered, cone-shaped or slitted designs that widen under pressure, and external retention sutures to prevent compaction.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If a guide wire is advanced through the lumen of a chronic drainage catheter, then the catheter can be exchanged, but the guide wire cannot pass through the distal end due to blockage by proteinaceous or mineral debris
Solution Approach 1:
The catheter tip is designed with a variable configuration that can change from a tapered cone-shaped introduction profile to a widened distal opening profile when guide wire resistance is met. This dynamic transformation allows the tip to adapt its geometry based on the mechanical interaction with the guidewire, enabling passage through blocked distal ends while maintaining a streamlined introduction shape.
Solution Approach 2:
The catheter tip is divided into multiple segments or layers that can separate or widen relative to each other when guide wire resistance is encountered. This segmentation allows the distal opening to expand while the proximal portion maintains its original tapered configuration, facilitating guidewire passage through blocked areas.
2Reliability
If retention sutures are placed within the lumen of the drainage catheter, then the catheter can be retained, but the sutures become compacted as the guidewire is advanced, narrowing the opening at the catheter tip and impeding passage of the guide wire
Solution Approach 1:
The retention sutures are extracted from the internal lumen and repositioned to an external location on the catheter surface. This extraction eliminates the interference between sutures and guidewire, allowing smooth guidewire passage while maintaining catheter retention through external suture anchoring to surrounding tissues.
3Device complexity
If the catheter tip has a fixed configuration, then the catheter structure is simple, but the guide wire cannot pass through when resistance is met at the distal end
Solution Approach 1:
The catheter tip transitions from a static fixed configuration to a dynamic variable configuration that can transform its geometry in response to mechanical forces. The tip maintains a simple tapered cone-shaped structure during introduction but can widen its distal opening when guide wire resistance is encountered, providing guidewire passage capability without requiring complex pre-configured mechanisms.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
Facilitates easier guidewire passage and prevents suture compaction, enabling routine and efficient exchange of drainage catheters over a guide wire, reducing blockages and maintenance complications.
Implementation Method 1
the tip of the catheter has a variable configuration, such that it is tapered and cone-shaped as it is introduced into the body, but under pressure of guide wire passage can, if resistance is met, alter its configuration to that its distal opening is wider than its original configuration
Data Source
AI summary
The invention features is an embodiment of a drainage catheter to be used to drain fluid or gas from any body space with an improved distal tip of variable configuration, to facilitate passage of a guide wire used for catheter exchange. The invention also features an embodiment of a retention mechanism used to stabilize the drainage catheter in the body, where in this embodiment the retention mechanism is located outside of the lumen of the tube as it courses from its distal attachment sites to the catheter hub.