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US 2015/0174364 A1Published application
Soft tip catheter
AssigneeSmiths Medical ASD, Inc.
InventorsJ. Michael Kennelly, Geoff Clark
Life of this patent
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AssigneeSmiths Medical ASD, Inc.
InventorsJ. Michael Kennelly, Geoff Clark
Estimating the term…
A catheter has a main portion made from an elongated tube and a soft tip that has softer flexural properties than the tube. The tip is affixed to the distal end of the tube. A reinforcement member is intermittently embedded in the body of the tube to provide kink and shear stress resistance as well as enhanced columnar strength and torque-ability to the catheter. With the flexible soft tip, the catheter is diverted when it meets an obstacle inside the patient to prevent the catheter from harming the patient. Another exemplar soft tip catheter is a one-piece elongated catheter with its distal portion selectively notched. A reinforcement member may be embedded along the length of the one-piece catheter or only along the main body portion. The notch at the distal portion may be a spiral cut or a number of ring cuts, with possibly different pitch, width and cut depth.
1-24. (canceled)
A catheter, comprising an elongated tube having a main body and a distal body, the tube having a circumferential wall formed from an elastomeric material defining at least one lumen terminating at a distal end having an opening to the lumen, the wall having an outer circumferential surface and an inner circumferential surface, at least one reinforcement member embedded in the wall along at least the length of the main body, the wall at the distal body having portions therealong selectively weakened to provide the distal body with flexural properties that are softer than the main body.
A catheter comprising:
A method of making a catheter, comprising the steps of:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.