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Neurovascular Structures

When designing neurovascular products, maximizing performance while minimizing the deliverable profile is essential. Understanding the desired delivery method and the materials required to engineer an effective precision-controlled component are crucial to the design & development process. Secant Medical combines advanced materials with biomedical textile forming technologies to enable the minimally invasive expansion and compaction of critical neurovascular devices.

A variety of materials can be used to achieve the specialized characteristics for devices used in ischemic stroke prevention and aneurysm repair. Metals such as nitinol and cobalt chromium are selected for their stiffness, precision and shape memory, while platinum provides radiopacity.

Our cross-functional team develops biomedical structures that have definitive benefits to neurovascular devices, including shape-transforming capabilities, controlled porosity, and low-profile fabrics as thin as
40-50 μm.

Benefits

Low profile
Atraumatic
Radiopaque
Kink resistant
Shape-memory
Expansion/compaction

Structures

Stents
Coils
Clot retrieval
Embolic filtration

Biomaterials

Nitinol
Platinum
PET
Cobalt-chromium
Other specialty alloys

Implantable Fabrics Revolutionize Neurovascular Devices Whitepaper Download Now

Case StudyGlobal Medical Device Manufacturer (Neurovascular)

Situation

The client was facing an issue getting prototypes for benchtop evaluation and animal studies in a timely manner. A standard three to five-week lead time would have caused them to miss scheduled trials and seriously jeopardize their project.
Challenge

Secant Group managed to schedule manufacturing time on the necessary braiding equipment but were not confident they could meet the client’s specifications in one round of prototyping. It was determined that several iterations would be required to meet the challenging physical and mechanical properties of the customer’s device. To meet the deadline for the scheduled trials, Secant Group would have to complete “real-time” engineering and troubleshooting on production equipment.
Action

Secant Group’s textile engineers were able to develop a flexible manufacturing approach that allowed them to do on-site prototyping. The client was able to schedule a trip to Secant within a week’s time, and together they were able to iterate and get immediate feedback without having to ship samples back and forth. Over a two-day period, seven iterations were created leading to a successful prototype design in record time.
Results

The actions of Secant Group’s team consisting of Textile Engineers, Manufacturing, and Business Development accomplished the on-site prototyping saving the client at least six months of development time and money. The client was able to meet the deadline for their trials and further device development is on-going.