The Effective and Safe Way to Use Crusade Micro catheter

05 March 21

Micro Catheter: Reshaping Vascular Treatment Procedures.

The micro catheter is a result of the continuous efforts that biomedical engineers, researchers, and doctors put in. To make the treatment of common, potentially fatal human diseases less dangerous with a higher success rate.

The innovations like that of a micro catheter have been reshaping the human medical field since the early human civilization. Remember when Alexander the Great died of Malaria? Now when someone gets malaria, they pop in a few tablets. And take a few days off work and get back to life in no time. That is the wonder of biomedical technology.

Similarly, many heart patients use to suffer from bifurcation lesions. Some even passed away when the lesion was in a complicated vascular location.

However, medical research and innovation came to the rescue once again. And introduced devices like the micro catheter that have redefined how doctors approach and successfully treat complicated problems.

What is A Micro Catheter?

A micro catheter, which people often call the crusade microcatheter is a double lumen catheter. A catheter is a small diameter tube that carries fluid into and out of the body.

A microcatheter, in this regard, has a diameter smaller than regular catheters. It helps the doctors in reaching into extremely thin veins mostly during cardiovascular surgeries and sometimes during neurosurgeries as well.

The size of the microcatheter is measured in French, which is a unit for measuring medical tube dimensions. And one French is equal to 0.33 millimeters.

For cardiovascular surgeries, the micro catheter can have a diameter of as small as 6 French or approximately 2 mm. And for neurosurgeries, it can be as small as 0.8 mm.

The crusade micro catheter features a working length of about 1.4 m. It has a distal shaft with good flexibility and a proximal shaft featuring great sturdiness.

The small, sturdy and flexible structure of a microcatheter makes it super easy to navigate through the intricate vascular system. Moreover, since most microcatheters come externally lubricated. And have an angular tip, therefore they offer easier penetration and feature convenient usage.

There are numerous reasons for the popularity of microcatheter. With their biggest advantage being that they make complicated procedures like percutaneous coronary intervention have a higher success rate.

Apart from making complicated processes more doable. This catheter also offers support during the antegrade wiring procedure, which is often the first step in the CTO treatments. Moreover, it offers facilitation in the wiring of the side branches of the heart during cardiovascular procedures. And allows for proper placement of stents during stent-placement angiography.

Uses of A Microcatheter

A microcatheter finds most use in minimally invasive procedures. And in procedures in which the lesion, plaque, or fluid is present in an extremely thin and difficult reach vessel. And hence it finds application in numerous endovascular procedures. Like reaching across a lesion, transferring fluid in and out of the body, etc.

Apart from the above-mentioned procedures, these catheters also find applications in placing and replacing guide wires. And for positioning other tiny interventional devices deep into the thin vessels.

The two of the most common procedure that uses a microcatheter involve the treatment of coronary total occlusion and the percutaneous coronary intervention.

CTO is a total or nearly total blockage of one of the arteries responsible for carrying oxygen-rich blood into and oxygen-depleted blood out of the heart. The blockage of these arteries may lead to fatigue, shortness of breath, and in some cases, angina.

Microcatheter plays a vital role in the treatment of CTO by aiding the treatments for CTO.

Percutaneous Coronary Intervention is another procedure that makes use of a micro catheter. The PCI process, as we will observe in the case study below, uses a catheter to reach into the angulated vessels. It also uses a catheter to place a stent in the arteries that are close to the heart and have narrowed and are restricting the blood flow.

The treatment of coronary artery calcification (CAC) a disease common among patients of chronic heart disease, is yet another procedure that maintains a higher success rate with the help of a microcatheter.

The Safe and Effective Way of Using a Micro catheter.

The procedure that we will discuss below is research that was conducted by a team of medical researchers and practitioners from various institutions in Beijing, China. They conducted this research intending to uncover a safe and effective way of treating bifurcation lesions, or injury or growth at a point where coronary artery branches into smaller vessels.

The team used a crusade microcatheter to assist in the reverse wire technique to resolve the bifurcation lesion problem. The procedure that they have recorded in their study is as follows:

The team used two types of crusade micro catheters, a 6 Fr microcatheter and a 7 Fr microcatheter. This was a PCI procedure, which is still difficult in the case of bifurcation lesions, but the use of a micro catheter facilitated to an extent where it became successful.

Some of the patients who participated in this study required a dilation of arteries, for which the team used an inflated balloon catheter to allow the micro catheter to pass the stenosis proximal or the restriction in the vessel close to the heart easily.

Before the insertion of the catheter, the doctors inserted a guidewire into the untargeted artery which was followed by the catheter. Once the catheter reached its position in the main artery, the reverse wire was pulled back to make its tip go into the opening of the vessel.

After the procedure was completed, the micro catheter was pulled back with assistance from the balloon trapping method.

Is There a Difference Between Microcatheter and Standard Catheter?

The difference between a microcatheter and a standard catheter is signified by a massive difference in their sizes. A standard catheter has a size ranging from 10 French to 16 French. On the other hand, a micro catheter features a size range of approximately 2 French to 7 French.

Apart from a difference in their sizes, the two catheters also differ in their applications.

Because of their small size, micro catheters commonly find use in getting to distal or far-off vessels. Owing to its small size it is also capable of penetrating through the labyrinth of the complex vascular system and reaches places where normal equipment can never reach.

While regular catheters are used for larger vessels and, the majority of the time, they find application in the form of urinary catheters or dialysis catheters.

Final Word

A micro catheter is a nifty little device that has made possible what medical practitioners of the past could only dream of.

The safe and effective method of using a micro catheter, as the study we have discussed above has mentioned, is to use it with the assistance of a guidewire with the reverse wire techniques being facilitated by two sharp curves, including a short distal curve and an opposite proximal curve.

Apart from the guidewire, an inflated balloon catheter enables the balloon trapping method to dilate the vessel, modify the plaque and allow the catheter to pass through easily.

However, there are some limitations to the procedure discussed here as the study was only restricted to a small group of people and was done by practiced medical professionals.

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