It is sometimes necessary or otherwise desirable to identify and treat a bodily passage, such as a sinus cavity. For example, when sinus cavities become blocked, balloon sinuplasty—the dilation of the sinus using a balloon catheter—provides an alternative to radical surgical approaches to unblocking the sinus cavity. Conventional procedures utilize two separate devices to accomplish balloon sinuplasty, a rigid scope and a guiding catheter. The scope is utilized to locate the point of treatment and to provide visualization throughout the treatment process and the guiding catheter is used to guide a treatment device to the point of treatment.
Advancing a scope and guiding catheter separately towards a point of treatment has significant drawbacks because it increases the complexity of the procedure and the amount of time required to complete the procedure. For example, the individual performing the procedure must use both hands to manipulate the scope and guiding catheter. Doing so is awkward and, in some cases, requires an assistant to complete the procedure. Furthermore, due to the tortuous anatomy of many bodily passages, physicians generally must maintain a variety of scopes and guiding catheters that have many different angle configurations so that particular devices with appropriate configurations can be selected at the time of treatment.
Scopes have been developed that include a deflectable tip, which allows physicians to view various portions of a bodily passage during the performance of a procedure. However, these scopes still present significant drawbacks. For example, scopes that include deflectable tips are rigid in nature, which limits their ability to be navigated through the tortuous anatomy of a bodily passage. In addition, these scopes do not incorporate a flexible material or a mechanism for transitioning between a rigid configuration and a flexible configuration during the performance of a procedure. This prevents adjustment of the scope during the procedure such that the scope can be adapted to the anatomy of a bodily passage, for example, when it is desired to pass the scope through an opening defined by the bodily passage.
A need exists, therefore, for improved medical devices and methods for identifying and treating a bodily passage, such as a sinus cavity.