Durability of Nitinol Cardiovascular Devices

Excerpt

Cardiovascular medical devices are designed and used for a myriad of reasons. They maintain blood flow, exclude aneurysms and dissections, close orifices and communications, and replace the function of valves, vessels, and membranes. With focused attention on the implant’s primary functions, it is easy to forget that an implant also has secondary objectives—to do no harm and stay intact. While loss of device integrity may not lead to immediate clinical sequelae, the potential risk for such events may increase over the lifetime of the device. Thus, durability of an implant is an important design consideration. Additionally, a current trend in the medical technology community is to develop devices that can be implanted through minimally invasive procedures rather than surgical procedures that require fully open access to the anatomy. For these low-profile applications, Nitinol is a frequently used material due to its unique superelastic properties. With the prevalence of cardiovascular disease increasing globally [1], further development of Nitinol-based devices is needed to help treat these patients. …