[Pliability and deflection of diagnostic catheters]. / Szívkatéterek hajlékonysága, meghajlítása.

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: The cardiac catheter is an intravascular catheter, which is introduced or implanted into the heart for diagnostic or therapeutic reasons. The catheters may break or king during their introduction and/or removal. AIM: The aim of the authors was to study the pliability of two catheters with the same material but different diameters according to the Food and Drug Administration's recommendation. METHOD: The bending points, diameter decrease, deflection, and their correlation and dependence on the distance from the tip, as well as the influence of the initial diameter of the catheters were determined. The bending of catheters was performed on 9 bending points (120-280 mm from the tip by 20 mm) on 16 gauges with different radius (10-2.5 mm by 0.5 mm). RESULTS: A linear dependency between the diameter decrease and deflection was observed, which was independent from the placement of the measurement in both catheters examined. The larger initial diameter had significant (p = 0.05) greater diameter decrease than the smaller, but the curves characteristic of the diameter decrease and deflection were similar. CONCLUSIONS: The applied method seems to be useful for the examination of weak points of cardiac catheters.