Patent Application
20100312327
Medical treatment of various illnesses or diseases commonly includes the use of one or more medical devices. When a body lumen requires repair, one type of medical device commonly employed is an expandable stent. Stents may be used to open an obstructed or partially obstructed body lumen such as an artery or other blood vessel. When a stent is used in a blood vessel, a delivery system is used to place and then expand the stent to open the damaged vessel and facilitate improved blood flow. The procedure of opening a blocked or partially blocked body passageway commonly includes the use of one or more stents in combination with other medical devices such as, but not limited to, an introducer sheath, a guiding catheter, a guide wire, an angioplasty balloon, etc.
Various physical attributes of a stent can contribute directly to the success rate of the device. These physical attributes include radiopacity, hoop strength, radial force, thickness of the metal, dimensions of the metal, and the like. Materials such as cobalt alloys and stainless steels are commonly used to form stents, guidewires, and other medical devices. These materials are selected on the basis of their known history of safety, effectiveness and biocompatibility. These materials however have limited physical performance characteristics as they relate to size, strength, weight, workability, bendability, biostability and radiopacity.
Refractory metals such as molybdenum (Mo), niobium (Nb), tungsten (W), rhenium (Re), and tantalum (Ta) are generally characterized as having high melting temperatures due to their relatively strong interatomic bonds. In addition, these metals tend to exhibit high strength, large elastic moduli, and extreme hardness. Some of these alloys also exhibit very good corrosion resistance, which is an important consideration in the manufacture of medical devices. Also, they tend to have good radiopacity, another desirable trait of medical devices.
Paradoxically, the same properties (hardness, melting temperature) that make these alloys a good candidate for constructing medical devices such as intraluminal stents also make them difficult to process into those same medical devices. As manufacturing technologies have advanced, however, these materials become more practical for medical device applications. Refractory metals can also exhibit low ductility, so alloying may be used to increase the ductility for use in certain medical devices such as stents and the like. However, most alloys to date have focused on binary alloys, which have not been shown to be ideal for these applications.
There is a need in the art for improved medical devices that have favorable material characteristics in relation to medical devices presently known and used in the art. The present invention is generally directed to a medical device such as, but not limited to, a stent that is at least partially formed of a novel ternary metal alloy that improves the physical properties of the medical, device thereby improving the success rate of such medical device.
The present invention provides for a medical device fabricated at least in part from a ternary alloy comprising molybdenum and rhenium. In one embodiment of this invention, molybdenum and rhenium are used as two of the alloy constituents in a ternary alloy comprising a refractory metal. These constituents provide for a material that has high strength and excellent radiopacity for use in a medical implant such as a stent. Further, in one preferred embodiment the ternary alloy of molybdenum and rhenium further includes a third metal constituent whose primary purpose is to improve the ductility of the alloy, making it better suited for use in a balloon expandable stent implant.
In addition to variations of the constituents and compositions that can be used to create a suitable ternary alloy for use in a stent in accordance with this invention, the metallic crystal structure may be varied as well. For example, a number of alloys may be formed in the hexagonal close-packed (HCP), body-centered cubic (BCC), face-centered cubic (FCC), and tetragonal crystal structure. Each of these crystal structures are known to provide specific advantages, and the ternary alloys described by this invention may be formed with any of these crystal structures to achieve these advantages.
The use of ternary alloys of the present invention provide for medical implants with particularly useful characteristics. For example, when used to construct an intraluminal stent implant, the ternary alloys of the present invention yield stents with thin struts and adequate radiopacity. The stents using the ternary alloys exhibit improved ductility over existing binary alloy refractory metal stents.
The use of stents in medical procedures is well known in the art. U.S. Pat. No. 7,331,987 discusses the use of stents in such procedures, and the contents of the '987 patent is fully incorporated herein by reference. The present invention when employed as a stent improves on existing stents by providing a unique ternary alloy material that improves the physical properties of the stent.
The catheter assembly 12, as depicted in
As shown in
In a typical procedure to implant the stent 10, the guide wire 18 is advanced through the patient's vascular system by well known methods so that the distal end of the guide wire is advanced past the plaque or diseased area 26. Prior to implanting the stent, the cardiologist may wish to perform an angioplasty procedure or other procedure (i.e., atherectomy) in order to open the vessel and remodel the diseased area. Thereafter, the stent delivery catheter assembly 12 is advanced over the guide wire so that the stent is positioned in the target area. The expandable member or balloon 22 is inflated by well known means so that it expands radially outwardly and in turn expands the stent radially outwardly until the stent is apposed to the vessel wall. The expandable member is then deflated and the catheter withdrawn from the patient's vascular system. The guide wire is typically left in the lumen for post-dilatation procedures, if any, and subsequently is withdrawn from the patient's vascular system. As depicted in
The stent 10 serves to hold open the artery after the catheter is withdrawn, as illustrated by
The present invention provides for a stent or other medical device to be fabricated at least in part from a ternary alloy comprising molybdenum and rhenium. Binary alloys of molybdenum with rhenium have been proposed as constituents for making stents, as in U.S. Pat. No. 7,452,502, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference. As discussed above, these binary alloys have low ductility and other characteristics that make their use in stents and other medical devices less than ideal. The present invention alloys the molybdenum and rhenium with a third constituent to produce a ternary alloy. For the medical devices constructed of the ternary alloy of molybdenum, rhenium, and a third constituent, the shortcomings of the workability and strength of the binary alloys are overcome, providing thinner, stronger stents with improved radiopacity and workability. A table is shown below in accordance with this invention showing selected ternary alloys and their typical crystal structure, although the crystal structures are not limited to those shown:
Compositions of the ternary alloys shown above may be varied to achieve the desired material properties. For example, the ternary alloys of Table 1 exhibit beneficial radiopacity, high corrosion resistance, good workability, and high strength. The third metal in the alloy is preferably selected to improve the ductility of the alloy, making it better suitable for a medical device such as a balloon expandable stent implant.
As set forth in Table 1, in addition to the variations in the constituents and compositions that can be used to create a suitable ternary alloy for use in a stent, the metallic crystal structure may be varied as well. For example, a number of alloys may be formed in the hexagonal close-pack (HCP) crystal structure, the body-centered cubic (BCC) crystal structure, the face-centered cubic (FCC) crystal structure, and tetragonal crystal structure. Each of these crystal structures provide specific advantages, and so the ternary alloys described herein are also selected to utilize those known advantages. In a preferred embodiment, molybdenum composition is expected to be in the range of about 20-60%.
Various phase diagrams for the constituents listed in table 1 can be accessed at the ASM International web site, www.asminternational.org, along with the crystal data and melting temperatures for each combination, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
Stents may be formed using well known manufacturing processes using tubing that is produced form the ternary alloys shown above. For that matter, tubing formed from any ternary alloy comprising at least one refractory metal constituent may be used to produce a stent with well known processes.
It will thus be seen that the objects set forth above, among those made apparent from the preceding description, are efficiently attained, and since certain changes may be made in the constructions set forth without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention, it is intended that all matter contained in the above description and shown in the accompanying drawings shall be interpreted as illustrative and not in a limiting sense. The invention has been described with reference to preferred and alternate embodiments. Modifications and alterations will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon reading and understanding the detailed discussion of the invention provided herein. This invention is intended to include all such modifications and alterations insofar as they come within the scope of the present invention. It is also to be understood that the following claims are intended to cover all of the generic and specific features of the invention herein described and all statements of the scope of the invention, which, as a matter of language, might be said to fall therebetween.
