Flexibility of guidewires

The guidewire is a flexible medical device, which subserves the navigation and positioning of devices for angiography and angioplasty. In our study we present a method for the determination of guidewires' bending stiffness and flexibility (reciprocal of the bending stiffness) improved by our research group. With this method the flexibility can be detachedly defined, it is quantitative and by this new technique different guidewires can be compared. We characterized the bending stiffness, which value does not change at the first 15 mm of the guidewires’ distal end (this part is inserted into the patient). The deflection of guidewires was performed by a tensile test machine. We examined three guidewires. As for the reliability of our method, we drew conclusions from the coefficients of variation. Our three coefficients were between 0.8-0.13 so our methodology is reliable; it is suitable for the objective determination and comparative analysis of the flexibility of guidewires.