Patent ID: 8852268

Claim:
A medical implant for insertion in a minimally invasive manner into a position of a body vessel in a contracted state and then transformed into a radially expanded state for expansion and support of the body vessel from an inside thereof, the medical implant comprising: a tubular body having a tube longitudinal axis, the tubular body configured with elongate struts that extend along the tube longitudinal axis and that form a wall of the implant, wherein the struts are plastically deformable at least in sections, by which plastically deformable sections, the implant remains permanently radially expanded transversely to the tube longitudinal axis in the expanded state; wherein at least one of the struts comprises an expandable element that forms one of the plastically deformable sections and that extends partially geometrically transversely to the tube longitudinal axis in the contracted state, wherein a course of the expandable element has a plurality of direction changes with respect to the tube longitudinal axis, wherein a material, a thickness and a strut width of the expandable element are selected such that applying force to the expandable element in a radial direction with respect to the tube longitudinal axis transforms the expandable element by plastic elongation into a permanently expanded state in which the strut section has a greater radial extension transversely to the tube longitudinal axis and a smaller axial extension with the tube longitudinal axis than in the contracted state, wherein the expandable element has a single constriction point in the contracted state that is designed as an intended breaking point for the expandable element, the single constriction point having a strut width that is two-thirds or less than strut widths of adjacent strut sections of the expandable element and configured to break where excessive force is applied in the radial direction of the tubular implant, allowing for redilatation and thereby preventing further expansion of the expandable element, and wherein a length of the tubular body is formed by pairs of the elongate struts that are each arranged longitudinally adjacent to each other and interconnected by connecting elements that respond to force applied in a direction coaxial with the tube longitudinal axis to induce permanent plastic enlargement of the implant axially.