Improved injection chamber for flow-guided catheters.

Selective catheterization of intracranial arteries for angiographic, embolization, and perfusion procedures is usually performed with a calibrated-leak balloon catheter first developed by Kerber [1]. This system employs a leaking latex micro balloon glued to the end of a very flexible 2.5 French Silastic catheter [2, 3]. The flexibility of this catheter necessitates that it be injected into the blood stream via a guiding catheter. Initially, the catheter was coiled and injected from a glass syringe. Lately, more sophisticated injection chambers have been developed that are either expensive or difficult to procure [4, 5]. We constructed an injection chamber using medical equipment available in most angiographic laboratories.