How sensing catheters are assisting surgical intervention

Cikautxo Medical OEM explains why more customers are seeking catheters with sensor technology built-in, and how this has impacted production.

About 10% of the western population will, at a certain stage in their life, be taken to a catheterisation laboratory for angioplasty surgery (stent placement), treatment of an arrhythmia or a heart valve replacement. This percentage is increasing with an ageing population. Fortunately, most of these interventions can be carried out using minimally invasive procedures that are assisted by smart imaging and sensing catheters that are the ‘eyes and ears’ of the surgeon directly at the point of intervention.

The growing number of cables in the cath lab is rapidly becoming a problem. The interventionist increasingly has to deal with instruments that have electrical cables connected to them. These cables hamper the workflow, and can result in dangerous situations eg, when a cable hooks behind the rotating X-ray C-arm, or during an electrical cardioversion. Sensing smart catheters are consequently more and more demanded in the cath lab.

‘Sensing’ trends in catheters

To improve the success rate of the most important cardiovascular diseases but also for other type of surgeries, catheter manufacturers have started to add electronic sensing functionality to the instruments resulting in what is referred to as ‘sensing’ catheters. Here, different examples of catheters are distinguished based on their application disease. Some of the ongoing applications today are:

Urology: Foley Catheter Temperature Sensors enable clinicians to accurately monitor urinary output and bladder temperature in addition to facilitating urine drainage. Commonly used also to monitor a patient's body temperature during surgery.

Vascular: Vascular catheters with blood glucose measurement have the potential to become a standard of care for the management of blood glucose levels in the critical care units of the hospital. The near-continuous glucose measurements automatically transfer whole blood from a radial artery, peripheral vein, or central venous catheter to an external flow-through glucose sensor. A vascular catheter with this type of sensor acquires a fresh blood sample every five to 15 minutes, measures the concentration of blood glucose, and then flushes the sample back into the bloodstream using flush solution. Standardisation of blood sample acquisition, analysis, and calibration will increase the accuracy and precision of the blood glucose measurement, a major advantage of those catheters compared to routine clinical methods.

On-going therapy:  A whole new class of implantable devices is being developed with the purpose of delivering local and on-going therapy. These ‘electroceuticals’ stimulate or block nerves directly addressing organs.

The ‘sensing’ catheters are contributing to Industry 4.0, where the Internet of Things (IOT) will also conquer the Internet of Medical Devices (IMD).

Manufacturing ‘sensing’ catheters

“Customers are increasingly demanding sensor integration in our OEM catheter manufacturing activity. We are embedding different types of sensors, from the most common ones like temperature or pressure sensors, up to the most difficult ones, like position systems.

“Sensors are very fragile components that need to be carefully manipulated during the assembly in the catheter. Intensive tests are also made to validate the correct sensing functionality after the product final assembly.

“Our sensor R&D centre, Ikerlan, located only a few miles from our cleanroom facilities, means we stay on top of the latest technologies in sensors, so we can help our customers to select the most appropriate solution for their needs,” said Iker Principe, CEO, Cikautxo Medical OEM.