Guidewire and Dilator Damage
Qualitative inspection of wires and dilators before and after TSP revealed varying levels of equipment damage with use of electrified guidewire (Figure 5). Shorter dilator-wire tip distances led to visually greater wire and dilator damage. While positioning the wire tip 1mm from the dilator improved the TSP effectiveness of electrified guidewire (Figure 3B), this created significant equipment damage including melting of 0.014” electrified guidewire, deformation and charring of 0.32” electrified guidewire, as well as melting and charring of the respective dilators (Figure 5). Using moderate dilator-wire tip distance (3mm), increasing the power applied to electrified guidewire increased the level of equipment damage (Supplementary Figure 1). In comparison, there was no sign of charring, melting or deformation using the dedicated RF wire at all dilator-wire tip distances (Supplementary Figure 1).