Telescoping Catheter Structure for Tortuous Valve Delivery
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional catheters face challenges in navigating tortuous vasculature and anatomical constraints during transcatheter procedures due to insufficient rigidity or flexibility, leading to buckling or distortion, especially when deploying prosthetic heart valves.
Innovation Solution
A telescoping catheter system with slidable tubular segments that can vary in length, featuring twist-lock connectors to maintain extended positions, providing adjustable rigidity and flexibility for navigating complex anatomies.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Strength
If the catheter is made stiffer to maintain shape and resist compression forces, then the structural integrity and ability to maintain complex shapes improve, but the catheter cannot navigate tortuous vasculature and tight bends
Solution Approach 1:
The catheter is divided into multiple telescoping segments that can slide relative to each other. These segments allow the catheter to bend and navigate tortuous paths while maintaining overall structural integrity through the segmented design that distributes mechanical stresses.
Solution Approach 2:
The catheter employs dynamic telescoping segments that can adjust their relative positions to change the catheter's overall stiffness and shape. This dynamic adjustment allows the catheter to adapt to different anatomical configurations while maintaining structural integrity when needed.
2Adaptability or versatility
If the catheter is made more flexible to navigate tight bends, then the ability to traverse tortuous paths improves, but the catheter may buckle or distort under compression forces
Solution Approach 1:
The segmented telescoping design allows each segment to independently flex and bend while maintaining overall catheter stability. The segments act as individual structural units that can accommodate bending stresses without causing overall catheter buckling.
Solution Approach 2:
The catheter's effective stiffness parameter can be changed by adjusting the extension or retraction of telescoping segments. When navigation is needed, segments can be retracted to increase flexibility; when stability is needed, segments extend to increase rigidity and prevent buckling.
3Length of moving object
If the delivery catheter is extended to reach target sites, then the reach and accessibility improve, but the catheter becomes more prone to buckling and compression
Solution Approach 1:
The extended catheter is composed of multiple telescoping segments that can be progressively extended. Each segment contributes to the overall length while maintaining structural integrity through its own rigid construction, allowing the catheter to reach distant targets without becoming uniformly weak.
Solution Approach 2:
Telescoping segments are nested within each other, allowing the catheter to extend to great lengths while maintaining a compact profile when retracted. The nested design ensures that each segment provides structural support, preventing buckling even when the overall catheter is fully extended to reach distant target sites.
Data Source
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AI summary
A telescoping catheter including an elongated tubular member having a proximal end, a distal end, and a passageway extending between the proximal end and the distal end. The tubular member includes a first tubular segment and a second tubular segment. The first tubular segment and the second tubular segment are slidable relative to one another to vary a length of the tubular member. The first tubular segment includes a first connector mateable with a second connector of the second tubular segment to selectively maintain the first and second tubular segments in an extended position. The second tubular segment includes a second proximal end that is mateable with a handle.