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US 8,556,968 B2Granted
Breast implant with low coefficient of friction between internal shells in an aqueous fluid environment
AssigneeIdeal Implant Incorporated
InventorsRobert S. Hamas, Dwight D. Back, Kevin Yacoub
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A fluid-filled surgically-implantable prosthetic device encloses one or more non-enclosing fitted shells arranged adjacent to and in a graduated relation to each other. The invention relates specifically to implantable breast prostheses with a low coefficient of friction between two or more interacting elastomeric shells in an aqueous fluid environment, without the addition of a lubricating agent to the fluid.
Claims14
A surgically-implantable prosthetic device comprising:
- an outer shell having an exterior surface, an interior surface, and enclosing a lumen, wherein the lumen enclosed by the outer shell is able to accommodate a first fluid therein;
- an inner shell having an exterior surface, an interior surface, and enclosing a lumen, wherein the lumen enclosed by the inner shell is able to accommodate a second fluid therein;
- non-enclosing fitted shells situated between the exterior surface of the inner shell and the interior surface of the outer shell such that all surfaces of the non-enclosing fitted shells are in communication with the first fluid, said non-enclosing fitted shells defining at least two interacting shell surface pairs;
- and
- at least one shell surface in the at least one interacting shell surface pair being textured to reduce the coefficient of static friction value to less than about 2 between the interacting shell surfaces.
2 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.