Abstract: A stent delivery system for medical treatment of a patient and for performing primary or direct stenting includes a balloon catheter, a stent, a sheath, and a flexible tapered introducer tip. The balloon catheter has a hub, shaft, and inflatable balloon, as well as a tubular stent mounted about the deflated balloon and crimped to an initial diameter. The introducer tip is affixed to the distal end of the balloon catheter and tapers to a maximum outer diameter equal to the crimped stent outer diameter plus the sheath wall thickness. The composite sheath has a multiple diameter design with a distal portion adapted to retractably cover the crimped stent, and a proximal portion having a smaller diameter. This smaller diameter enables greater flow of a radiopaque contrast fluid around the outside of the proximal sheath and through the inside of a guiding catheter, thus providing the system with a high visibility capability.

Abstract: A guiding catheter, including a specialized guiding catheter referred to as a guiding sheath, has a uniquely curved three-dimensional distal end portion. This distal end portion has a two-dimensional turn of less than a full circle, which turn includes both an incomplete turn section and a distal extension thereof which is an end section. The turn lies in three dimensions and, when viewed in a direction which moves distally along the curve, curves upwardly and downwardly and again upwardly, each out of the plane within which the rest of the catheter lies. The guiding catheter or sheath is especially useful for guiding an electrophysiology catheter for facilitating ablation within the right atrium and/or ablation within the left atrium, such as by way of a transsceptal procedure.