Collapsible Heart Valve Prosthesis With Coupled Blocks for Catheter Navigation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current transcatheter procedures for replacing atrioventricular heart valves, particularly the mitral valve, face challenges due to complex anatomy and require invasive open-heart surgery or long operations, and existing transcatheter prostheses face issues with navigation and stability during implantation due to misaligned connecting blocks and rigid distal capsules.
Innovation Solution
A collapsible heart valve prosthesis with a mutual coupling mechanism for connecting blocks that maintains them in a compact configuration, aligned with the catheter axis, allowing a shorter distal capsule and improved navigability through tortuous anatomies, ensuring stable release and minimally invasive implantation.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Device complexity
If connecting blocks are provided without mutual coupling mechanism, then the prosthesis structure is simpler, but the catheter navigability through tortuous anatomies deteriorates due to misaligned blocks and rigid distal capsule
Solution Approach 1:
The mutual coupling mechanism preliminarily positions the connecting blocks in a constrained configuration before implantation, ensuring they are properly aligned with the catheter axis during navigation. This preliminary action prevents misalignment issues that would otherwise occur during the procedure, allowing the catheter to navigate tortuous anatomies more easily.
2Length of stationary object
If distal capsule is made longer to accommodate misaligned connecting blocks, then the blocks can be contained, but the catheter flexibility and navigability deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The mutual coupling mechanism performs a preliminary alignment function, ensuring connecting blocks are correctly positioned before they need to be accommodated by the distal capsule. This eliminates the need for an excessively long capsule, thereby preserving catheter flexibility and navigability through tortuous anatomies.
3Ease of operation
If open-heart surgery is used to replace heart valve, then the valve replacement can be performed with direct access, but the procedure invasiveness and operation duration increase
Solution Approach 1:
The invention replaces the mechanical open-heart surgical approach with a transcatheter delivery system. The collapsible prosthesis is delivered through a catheter that can be inserted percutaneously, eliminating the need for thoracotomy, cardiopulmonary bypass, and direct surgical manipulation of the heart valve. This substitution dramatically reduces procedure invasiveness while maintaining effective valve replacement capability.
Solution Approach 2:
The prosthesis employs a collapsible design with flexible components that can be compressed within the catheter for percutaneous delivery. The flexible structure allows the device to navigate through the vascular system and be deployed at the target site without requiring open surgical access, thereby reducing procedure invasiveness while achieving the same therapeutic goal.
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
The solution enables safe, controlled, and economical transcatheter implantation with reduced invasiveness, overcoming anatomical challenges and reducing the risk of complications by enhancing catheter flexibility and stability during navigation and deployment.
Implementation Method 1
The prosthesis and each of the elements thereof are configured to be collapsible
Implementation Method 2
The prostheses can be implanted by means of catheters which can navigate inside the vascular system
Data Source
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3a~4
AI summary
A prosthesis for a heart valve for implantation with a transcatheter procedure comprising an expansible central body (16) and a containment portion (18) having one or more sub-components (22); the central body is provided with at least one elastically flexible arm (19), to which there is fixed a connecting block (20a, 20b, 120a, 120b, 220, 320) for connecting each sub-component of the containment portion (18) to the central body (16) and the arms are formed so as to be able to take up an expanded configuration, into which each arm returns, without any constraints, and a compact configuration which is able to allow the positioning of the prosthesis with a transcatheter procedure; each connecting block is provided with a mutual coupling mechanism (40a, 40b, 140a, 140b, 242, 340) which can selectively maintain the arm to which it is fixed in the compact configuration.