Transplantation instrument, method of bending transplantation instruments, and apparatus for introducing bent transplantation instrument into catheter

Abstract

Abstract A method of bending an artificial blood vessel (A). First, an artificial blood vessel (A) is formed by a pair of mutually separated ring-shaped wire members (101, 102), a tubular outer member (7) connecting the wire members (101, 102) together and consisting of a flexible and tensed sheet, and intermediate ring-shaped wire members (12) arranged intermittently between the two ring-shaped wire members (101, 102) and fixedly sewn or bonded at their outer circumferential portions on or to the outer member (7). When the front ring-shaped wire member (101) is drawn forward at the portions thereof which correspond to diametrically opposite divisional points (411, 431) thereon while restricting the forward movement, which occurs in conjuction with this drawing operation, of the portions of the front wire member (101) which correspond to intermediate point (421, 441) between the divisional points (411, 431) by projections (18c) provided on tapering surface (18d) of a funnel type cylinder (18), this allowing the front ring-shaped wire member (101) to be bent wavily so that the portions of the divisional points (411, 431) extend forward so as to form summits of mountains with the portions of the intermediate points (421, 441) forming the bottoms of ravines. When the portions of the divisional points (411, 431) of the front ring-shaped wire member (101) are further drawn forward, the intermediate ring-shaped wire members (12) and rear ring-shaped wire member (102) are bent wavily with the same phase as that of the front ring-shaped wire member (101) owing to the restricting effect of the tapering surface (18d) and projections (18c). As a result, the artificial blood vessel as a whole is folded into small segments.

Inventors

• 👤 Kanji Inoue

Bibliographic Details