Expandable Surgical Device Struts with Twisting Intermediate Regions
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current medical devices for vascular clot and emboli retrieval, vascular snaring, and guidewire positioning lack effective mechanisms for expanding within body lumens to securely capture and manipulate obstructive materials and guidewires, often resulting in inadequate engagement and trauma to vessel walls.
Innovation Solution
The development of expandable surgical devices with tubular bodies that transform from a collapsed to an expanded configuration, featuring struts with a cross-sectional width less than their radial thickness and twisting intermediate regions, allowing for enhanced engagement and reduced trauma during deployment and retrieval within body lumens.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Object-affected harmful factors
If conventional rigid struts are used in expandable devices, then structural strength is maintained, but trauma to vessel walls increases and surface area engagement decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent changes the geometric parameters of the struts by making their cross-sectional width less than their radial thickness, which fundamentally alters how they interact with vessel walls. This parameter change allows the struts to engage more effectively with clots while reducing traumatic contact with the vessel wall, thus resolving the contradiction between strength and trauma reduction.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent applies different geometric qualities to different parts of the strut structure. The struts have a specific cross-sectional configuration where the width is less than the radial thickness, creating localized engagement characteristics that reduce wall trauma while maintaining overall structural integrity through the expanded device configuration.
2Area of moving object
If expandable devices are deployed to increase surface area engagement, then capture effectiveness improves, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The expandable device is segmented into multiple struts that can be individually configured with specific cross-sectional dimensions. This segmentation allows the device to achieve increased surface area engagement through the collective action of multiple simplified strut elements rather than requiring a single complex structure, thus resolving the contradiction between surface area and device complexity.
3Area of moving object
If struts are designed with width less than radial thickness, then surface area engagement is improved, but manufacturing precision requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent establishes specific parameter relationships (width less than radial thickness) that can be achieved through standard manufacturing processes for medical devices. By defining this clear parameter relationship rather than requiring absolute dimensional precision, the invention improves surface area engagement while keeping manufacturing precision requirements within practical limits.
Data Source
AI summary
A retrieval method for removing clots is provided using a device that includes a shaft carrying an expandable cage. The expandable cage includes a plurality of struts, each strut including proximal and distal ends coupled to non-expandable sections of the shaft distal end and an intermediate region that expands from a collapsed configuration to an expanded configuration. The struts have radial surfaces extending in a radial direction and outer circumferential surfaces in the collapsed configuration, and the intermediate regions of the struts are configured to twist along their lengths when expanded to the expanded configuration, e.g., such that the radial surfaces become oriented substantially circumferentially and the outer surfaces become oriented substantially radially.