Improved fatigue life safety in new self-expandable stent design

Invention 11068

Improved fatigue life safety in new self-expandable stent design

A self-expandable stent with reduced bending strain at fatigue joints based on smooth cell topologies has been designed at McGill University.

Market Need

Self-expandable stents are primarily used to help open scaffold tubular passages such as blood vessels, the esophagus, and biliary ducts. Since they are introduced into the body by minimally invasive procedures, there is high demand for stents in a variety of surgical applications. Despite advances in design, daily movement and pressure causes stent fatigue failure at the device’s joints.

Technology Summary

By coding the proposed method into a software package, this invention is able to automatically synthesize stent lattice geometry with smooth cell topologies. The cells of the scaffolding lattice are synthesized with continuous curvature to reduce the bending strain of the stents corner elements. Compared to traditional stent designs, the fatigue safety factor and supportive radial force are improved by 84.3% and 95%, respectively.

Advantages

• Software is able to match the stent lattice geometry with smooth cell topologies in the target tissue
• Continuous curvature design of the stent reduces the bending strain and improves the fatigue life caused by body movement

Patent Status

Issued US, Filed CA