Segmented Medical Catheter Stiffness Gradient for Vessel Navigation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional medical catheters face a balance issue between accessibility and support performance, with flexible distal ends compromising support and stiff proximal ends hindering accessibility, leading to poor performance in navigating tortuous blood vessels and maintaining stationarity during medical procedures.
Innovation Solution
A medical catheter design featuring a proximal section with greater stiffness than the distal section, which includes a transition section with gradually decreasing stiffness from the proximal end to the distal end, along with a flexible section, optimized by a specific axial length ratio and two-point bending flexural strength, to achieve balanced accessibility and support performance.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If the distal section is made flexible to improve accessibility through tortuous blood vessels, then accessibility is improved, but support performance deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The catheter is divided into multiple sections with different stiffness characteristics: a proximal section with higher stiffness for support, a distal section with lower stiffness for flexibility, and a transition section connecting them. This segmentation allows each section to fulfill its specific functional requirement independently.
Solution Approach 2:
Different sections of the catheter are designed with locally optimized properties: the proximal section has higher stiffness to provide support during medical device passage, while the distal section has lower stiffness to navigate tortuous blood vessels easily, with the transition section providing a gradual intermediate transition.
2Reliability
If the proximal section is made stiff to improve support performance during medical device delivery, then support performance is improved, but accessibility through tortuous vessels deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The catheter structure is segmented into distinct functional zones where the proximal section provides stiffness for support during device delivery, while the distal section provides flexibility for navigation, with a transition section bridging the two extremes.
Solution Approach 2:
The proximal section is designed with locally optimized high stiffness to maintain catheter position and support medical device passage, while the distal section has locally optimized low stiffness for navigating bends, with the transition section providing a gradual property transition.
3Ease of operation
If the transition section has a gradual stiffness decrease to balance flexibility and support, then both accessibility and support performance are improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The catheter is divided into three main segments (proximal, transition, distal) with progressively changing stiffness properties, allowing systematic optimization of the transition zone while maintaining overall structural manageability.
Solution Approach 2:
The stiffness parameter is gradually changed along the transition section from the proximal to distal end, creating a smooth gradient that balances the conflicting requirements of support and flexibility without abrupt transitions that would increase complexity.
Data Source
AI summary
A medical catheter and a method for fabricating it are disclosed. The medical catheter includes a catheter body including a proximal section and a distal section sequentially arranged along an axis. Stiffness of the proximal section is greater than stiffness of the distal section. The distal section includes a transition section and a flexible section from a proximal end to a distal end thereof. Stiffness of the flexible section is smaller than stiffness of the transition section. The stiffness of the transition section gradually decreases from a proximal end to a distal end thereof. A ratio of an axial length of the flexible section to an axial length of the transition section is 0.05-0.4. This axial stiffness design of the medical catheter can achieve a balance between its accessibility and support performance, which can result in better therapeutic outcomes of a surgical procedure.