Patent ID: 8591539

Claim:
A combination of an expandable conduit-guide and a medical device, the conduit-guide providing a leak-tight conduit through a skin between an inside of a corpus and an outside of the corpus, said conduit-guide including a body encompassing a lumen, and having a distal end to be positioned outside of the corpus, and having a proximal end to be positioned inside of the corpus, the conduit-guide and the medical device being configured and dimensioned relative to one another so that the medical device can be placed in and passed through the lumen between the distal end and the proximal end of the conduit-guide, wherein the body of the conduit-guide is constructed from a braided wire having a spring load, wherein the body of the conduit-guide is capable of actively expanding the lumen from a closed diameter to an opened diameter and passively collapsing from the opened diameter to the closed diameter, wherein a portion of the braided wire is covered by a flexible membrane enabling the braided wire to articulate from the closed diameter to the opened diameter, wherein the flexible membrane seals an interstitial space resultant between the braid openings, wherein the proximal end of the conduit-guide includes a bare section which does not contain the flexible membrane in order to permit tissue in-growth about the braided wire to provide for anchoring the conduit-guide, wherein the conduit-guide and the medical device are further configured and dimensioned relative to one another so that when the medical device is placed in the lumen, the lumen actively expands, and when the medical device is withdrawn from the lumen, the body of the conduit-guide passively collapses the lumen under the spring load of the braided wire.