Method of manufacturing a cardiac harness
AssigneeParacor Medical, Inc.
InventorsLilip Lau, Bill Hartigan
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A cardiac harness for treating congestive heart failure is disclosed. The harness applies elastic, compressive reinforcement on the left ventricle to reduce deleterious wall tension and to resist shape change of the ventricle during the mechanical cardiac cycle. Rather than imposing a dimension beyond which the heart cannot expand, the harness provides no hard limit over the range of diastolic expansion of the ventricle. Instead, the harness follows the contour of the heart throughout diastole and continuously exerts gentle resistance to stretch. Also disclosed is a method of delivering the cardiac harness to the heart minimally invasively.
Claims20
A method of manufacturing a cardiac harness, comprising:
- forming an elongate member having undulations from a sheet of material;
- interconnecting the undulations to form a cardiac harness;
- and
- deforming the cardiac harness to generally correspond to the shape of a portion of a human heart between the base and apex of the heart.
A method of manufacturing a cardiac harness for reducing wall tension in a patient's heart, comprising:
- providing a substantially flat sheet of Nitinol;
- etching the sheet to form a harness member comprising a plurality of hinges;
- interconnecting the hinges;
- deforming the harness member to generally correspond to the shape of a portion of a human heart between the base and apex of the heart;
- and
- annealing the deformed harness member.
A method of manufacturing a cardiac harness for reducing wall tension in a patient's heart, comprising:
- providing a substantially flat sheet of deformable material;
- etching the sheet to form a harness member comprising a plurality of interconnected hinges;
- and
- deforming the etched harness member to a shape that generally follows the contour of at least a portion of the epicardium of a patient's heart.
A method of manufacturing a cardiac harness for reducing wall tension in a patient's heart, comprising:
- providing a substantially flat sheet of Nitinol;
- photochemically etching the sheet to form multiple, substantially continuous rings comprising a plurality of interconnected hinges;
- manipulating the rings to create a band shaped configuration;
- interconnecting the rings to form a cardiac harness to generally correspond to the shape of a portion of a human heart between the base and the apex of the heart;
- and
- annealing the rings so that the rings are in a substantially austenitic state when in the band shaped configuration.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.