Importance

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Abstract

An intravascular catheter of the type having an inner tubular member defining a lumen, an outer tubular member surrounding said inner member, and a support member mounted between the tubular members to provide rigidity to the flexible catheter. The support member comprises a wire braid, and in the preferred embodiment comprises a stainless steel wire braid which has been tempered or hardened to give it a significantly high tensile strength. This higher tensile strength affords significantly greater kink resistance to the flexible catheter as the lumen size is increased and the wall thickness is decreased, however, the high tensile strength wire braid has the disadvantage of tending to flare out during a bonding process when the catheter is joined to a tip, for example. In this invention, a retaining device is added to the end of the catheter to be joined, for preventing the flaring of the wire braid, whether the wire be of a high tensile strength or not.

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First Claim