Electric Micro-Steerable catheter using smart electroactive polymers

描述（由申请人提供）：心律失常是最常见的心脏疾病之一。心房颤动（AFib）是一种常见的心律失常，发病率高。目前有超过250万美国人患有AFib，每年诊断出约16万例新病例。对于40岁以上的美国人，AFib发展的终身风险估计为25%。房颤可导致心绞痛、心力衰竭和中风。房颤的治疗对于患有严重和频繁发作的心律失常的患者至关重要。消融导管用于治疗室性和室上性心律失常，并且有新的证据表明，与无法治愈的药物治疗和植入治疗相比，消融导管治疗心律失常具有治愈性。所提出的基于EAP的电动微型可操纵导管利用SPS创始人之一发明的突破性固态致动器技术来操纵导管位置。所施加的电压与EAP致动器中的尺寸变化之间的线性对应关系使得能够精确控制导管头端及其力水平，从而显著缩短手术时间，并受益于可编程操作能力。所提出的致动技术与当前导管的容易集成导致非常低成本的装置。公共卫生相关性：基于SPS专利电活性聚合物的先进微可控心脏消融导管的开发可以显著减少治疗房颤的手术时间和成本。这将使数百万患有心律失常的美国人能够广泛获得和接受挽救生命的治疗性导管消融。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Arrhythmias are among the most common disorders of the heart. Atrial fibrillation (AFib) is a common arrhythmia associated with significant morbidity. There are currently more than 2.5 million Americans suffering from AFib and there are about 160,000 new cases diagnosed each year. The lifetime risk for the development of AFib is estimated 25% for Americans older than 40. AFib can lead to angina, heart failure, and stroke. Treatment of AFib is essential for the patient suffering from severe and frequent episodes of these arrhythmias. Ablation catheters are used to treat both ventricular and supraventricular arrhythmia, and there is emerging evidence that the ablation catheter treatment of arrhythmias is curative compared with drug therapy and implant treatments which are not curative. The proposed EAP-based electrical micro-steerable catheter utilizes a breakthrough solid state actuator technology, invented by one of the founders of SPS, to manipulate the catheter position. The linear correspondence between the applied voltage and the dimension change in the EAP actuator enables precise control of the catheter tip and its force level, resulting in a significantly reduced procedure time with the benefit of a programmable operation capability. The ease of integration of the proposed actuation technology with the current catheter results in a very low cost device. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The development of advanced micro-steerable cardiac ablation catheter based on SPS proprietary electroactive polymers can significantly reduce the procedure time and cost to treat the atrial fibrillation. This will enable the wide accessibility and acceptance of the life-saving curative catheter ablation to millions of Americans threaded by cardiac arrhythmias.