At present,
percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) is the most effective treatment of
coronary artery stenosis. However, in case post-dilation of the
stent is needed, the tip of the commonly used post-dilation balloon
catheter cannot always pass through the
stent smoothly, especially when it is situated in the curved part of the vessel. To improve the performance of traditional post-dilation balloon
catheter, a preliminary design of a novel
catheter with a spherical-tip is proposed. Since the performance of this spherical-tip
catheter is still unclear, in this study, finite
element analysis (FEA) and experimental validation of blood vessel with different curvature radii were performed to test and evaluate the performance of the spherical-tip
catheter design. The comparative results between the two types of
catheters demonstrate that in the simulated post-dilation process, the spherical-tip
catheter is easier to pass through the
stent placed in the curved vessel without the deformation of the
stent strut, and can theoretically reduce the operation time and improve the safety of the operation. Furthermore, the strong consistency between simulation and experiment indicates that the finite
element (FE) model can be a helpful tool for future optimization and evaluation of novel
catheters, so as to save time and budget in product development and reduce/replace animal studies.