Secant Group offers several marketleading capabilities, such as its patented Drop End technology. Tubular woven implants are manufactured with this technology, which drops warp ends circumferentially within the tapered region to maintain a consistent density around the entire construct.
In other technologies, the ends are dropped next to each other, rather than circumferentially, leading to regions with different porosity. The Secant method is superior for maintaining specific characteristics, such as porosity and flexibility along the length of the textile structure. Tubular woven fabrics may be used during surgery to repair or replace various damaged or diseased lumens within the human body; for example, in vascular surgery, in which a woven tubular prosthesis is used to repair a blood vessel.
Another notable patent granted to the Secant Group is for its supported lattice for cell cultivation technology. Secant saw a need to create a lattice for cultivating living cells to form living tissue, so surgical implants could act as grafts to heal damaged tissue and correct various disorders. One example for this application is a tubular support lattice for a coronary bypass graft.
This tubular support substrate is comprised of resilient filamentary members interlaced together to form a coarse mesh and another plurality of flexible filamentary members braided together to form a fine mesh. The coarse and fine mesh filaments are then braided together with the resilient filamentary members to form the construct. The finer mesh built with flexible fibres creates small interstices that provide a bed adapted for growing living cells in a two-dimensional array across the cell cultivation lattice.
This creates a substantial continuous surface of living tissue that forms a tube usable as a graft for a coronary bypass operation.
Woven tubular grafts with regions of varying flexibility is another Secant Group patent. Woven grafts have numerous advantages, such as impermeability, low porosity and small bulk, which are important characteristics for several medical procedures, such as repairing a vascular aneurysm. However, a disadvantage with woven textiles is their lack of flexibility due to the warp and weft yarns interlacing at 90° angles, causing them to lock in place.
By tuning the flexibility within certain regions of a woven graft using elastic materials and tensioning techniques, Secant can provide areas with more radial expansion and others with less radial expansion. By weaving in radial flexibility, the graft can radially expand to match the diameter and shape of the artery. In regions where a set diameter is desired, and no radial expansion is wanted, Secant can apply greater tension on the weft, which inhibits the yarn from expanding any further. For example, the region adjacent to an aneurysm needs to maintain a set diameter so that the hydraulic pressure of the blood as it is pumped through the artery can relieve pressure on the aneurysm. The same techniques can be used when making straight or bifurcated tubular grafts.
Visit the Secant Group website via the address below to learn how it can use patented manufacturing capabilities to customise your next implantable device.
