Patent ID: 8048142

Claim:
An expandable endoluminal prosthesis comprising, in its unexpanded configuration, a tubular body extending along a longitudinal axis and having a distal end and a proximal end; the tubular body having a porous wall defined by a plurality of interlaced circumferential lines forming a pathway motif or pattern wherein at least one line is closed onto itself; each of the lines extends along an axis; each of the lines comprises at least one plurality of modules; each module comprises three lobes, that is, two outer lobes and one inner lobe disposed between the two outer lobes in the pathway of the pattern, said two outer lobes comprising: a closer outer lobe having a first distance from the axis of the line of the module; a farther outer lobe having a second distance from the axis of the line of the module, the second distance being greater than the first distance; a first module of said plurality of modules comprises three lobes, a first and a second outer lobes of said module and a third inner lobe of said module; a second module, adjoining said first module along said pathway, comprises three lobes, a fourth and fifth outer lobes of said second module and a sixth inner lobe of said second module; each lobe of said plurality of modules comprising one or more curved sections having concavities facing in the same direction, a point far from said line axis of the module defining an apex of the lobe; the lobes opening alternately on opposite sides of the pathway of the pattern along the extent of the line; both of the outer lobes of the three lobes being extended by straight outer arms; the at least one plurality of modules being arranged consecutively so as to have successive outer arms which extend from the outer lobes in substantially opposite directions relative to the pathway of the pattern for two successive modules; and wherein, for said first and adjoining second module, the distance between the apex of the first outer lobe and the apex of the third inner lobe of the same module is less than the distance between the apex of the same first lobe and the apex of the fourth or the fifth outer lobe of said adjoining module; for each line, there is at least one adjacent line which has a motif that is a mirror image of said line with respect to an axis parallel to the axis of said line and said adjacent line; at least one connecting element or bridge is provided between two adjacent lines, so that the facing outer lobes are directly opposite one another; and wherein said bridge extends and directly connects apexes of two facing closer outer lobes of said adjacent lines along a longitudinal axis parallel to the longitudinal axis of the tubular body.