Merit Medical Employee Innovators – Christopher Cindrich

Every day, Merit Medical strives to understand physician needs and innovate and deliver high-quality medical devices that improve patient care.

Behind this important work is a team of innovators, employees who take our mission to the next level by inventing solutions to the toughest clinical challenges.

I hold many patents at Merit, but one I’m most excited about is a vascular prosthesis deployment device I invented, as well as its method of use.

The product benefits dialysis patients. It’s used to help those with stenoses (narrowing) and occlusions (blockages) in their dialysis outflow circuit.

Obstructions in the outflow circuit can lead to repeated interventions, frequent trips to the hospital, and inadequate dialysis treatment.

This product is designed to work with stents to open patients’ diseased vessels, thereby improving dialysis treatment and quality of life.

An ordinary zip tie.

The deployment device is more complex, but it was designed to use the same basic motion that a zip tie has—movement in one direction only .

This deployment device is intended for use with self-expanding stents. Stents are used to hold a diseased vessel open to promote improved blood flow during dialysis.

To insert a self-expanding stent into a patient’s vessel, it first must be squeezed inside a sheath until it’s ready to deploy. The sheath is attached to the deployment device.

To deploy the stent, a physician depresses a lever on the handle of the deployment device, much like a handbrake on a bicycle.

This causes a ‘slide’ inside the deployment device to move backwards and forwards.

The slide is attached to the sheath holding the stent, now inside the patient. This back-and-forth motion slowly exposes the squeezed stent out of the sheath and farther into the patient’s vessel.

To position the stent, the physician depresses the handle several times, moving the stent in one direction only. When the lever is released, the device zip tie feature holds the sheath in place while the lever resets, allowing the physician to depress the lever again and again, each time pushing another segment of the stent into the vessel.

The zip tie feature allows the stent to be deployed incrementally, which affords the physician exceptional control while placing the stent. Additionally, the zip tie feature helps the deployment system overcome friction between the stent and the sheath holding it.

As the stent is released, it expands to hold open the vessel. The deployment device is then removed from the patient’s vessel, and the procedure is finished.

The biggest challenge wasn’t in inventing the zip tie feature but creating a sheath that could hold the squeezed stent and not stretch or elongate during stent deployment.

Previous versions of the sheath would stretch and not allow the stent to be completely released into the vessel. In combination with refinements to the zip tie component, we created reinforced sheaths to overcome this issue.

I’m drawn to people who are problem solvers. Inventors, in a way, are simply problem solvers.

In my case, I’m given opportunities at Merit to design and create devices that help provide improved methods of delivering better patient care.

This requires me to put myself in the shoes of the physician, the patient, and Merit as a manufacturer.

FOR THE PHYSICIAN: How can I invent a tool that would allow me to complete a task correctly, safely, and effectively? How can I invent a device that allows physicians to adapt to enhancements quickly?

FOR THE PATIENT: How can I help design a device that results in improved quality of life—perhaps less visits to the hospital, which can translate into more time spent with loved ones?

FOR MERIT: And finally, how can I create a device that Merit, as a manufacturer, can successfully produce? How can we assemble its parts in a robust yet simple and cost-effective manner?

This is problem solving, and anyone who thinks critically in this way, I consider a role model.