ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 23 -- United States Patent no. 12,364,613, issued on July 22, was assigned to Medtronic Vascular Inc. (Santa Rosa, Calif.).
"Hydraulic crimping device" was invented by Paraic Frisby (Galway, Ireland), Eveanne Slattery (Dublin) and John Gallagher (Parkmore Business Park West, Ireland).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A crimping device for reducing the size of prosthetic heart valve devices and other medical devices. A hydraulically operated piston advances a pusher toward an opening of a funnel. An interior surface of the funnel is configured to provide substantially uniform compression forces to a prosthetic heart valve device between the pusher and the funnel as the pusher...