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Pulling Its Weight: Tensile

Testing Challenge Speeds
Regulatory Approval for Boston
Scienti c
Balancing costs and quality can be challenging for any manufacturer. But for those
involved in health care, it’s especially difficult because tools used in medical procedures
should never be compromised by efforts to cut expenses.

But cutting costs and ensuring maximum quality are not mutually exclusive. For example,
Boston Scientific—one of the world’s leading developers of medical devices and
technologies—recently saved time and resources and ensured product reliability with an
innovative approach to process validation. ORGANIZATION
When an outside company transferred production of a diagnostic catheter to their facility Boston Scientific
in Heredia, Costa Rica, Boston Scientific needed to prove that catheters produced at the
new location would be just as good. But the project team handling the transfer had just
OVERVIEW
four weeks to complete test method requirements needed to secure approval from
regulators—a deadline that didn’t allow for lengthy test method validations. One of the world’s largest developers,
manufacturers, and marketers of
So with the help of Minitab Statistical Software, the team used data analysis to verify that medical devices
the new catheters’ pull wire strength continued to meet specifications using the process Products used to treat a wide range of
medical conditions, including heart,
settings already in place. The team’s results permitted Boston Scientific to avoid digestive, pulmonary, vascular,
performing a costly process validation, and enabled the company to proceed with its urological, women’s health, and chronic
scheduled manufacturing plans. diseases
Approximately 23,000 employees
worldwide

The Challenge
CHALLENGE
The diagnostic catheter was designed for the coronary sinus, a collection of veins in the Confirm the equivalency of its catheter’s
heart. Doctors use it during early intervention procedures for heart-attack patients. The pull-wire strength to previous product
handle of this tube-like device controls the pull wire, which manipulates a flat wire that testing results, and eliminate the need to
activates the electrode tip responsible for the tool’s curvature. This arch controls the perform test method validation by
leveraging its existing tension testing
catheter’s stability during a procedure, making the “pull wire” critical to its success.
standard.

PRODUCTS USED
Minitab® Statistical Software

RESULTS
Used data analysis to confirm results of
previous process validation.
Demonstrated that catheters met
established standards for safety and
strength.
Shortened time required for regulatory
approval.

 
The team at Boston Scientific’s Costa Rica facility, above, used Minitab Statistical Software to prove that adapting the
catheter tension testing process would not impact the strength results of the pull wire.
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To guarantee the pull wire’s performance, the solder securing it to the handle is
examined for strength by applying tension during a tensile test. Boston Scientific needed
to show that catheters made at the Heredia facility could match the performance of the
original manufacturer’s catheters in the tensile test. While both companies’ settings
produced catheters that met the 5-pound specification for pull-wire strength, there were
still inconsistencies in each company’s tensile test settings.

A universal testing machine measures tensile strength by applying increasing amounts of

pressure to a catheter held between two grips. The distance between the two grips, or
gauge length, differed between the two companies’ test methods, since Boston
Scientific’s gage length aligned with ASTM’s (American Society for Testing and Materials)
standard for tensile strength. In addition, the original catheter was designed and
approved in an era when test method validation of specific test method standards wasn’t
required. The team needed to verify that the difference in gauge length did not
compromise the effectiveness of the tests, and to demonstrate that both the new and
original catheters were safe and reliable. A time-consuming and costly test method
validation process might be required.

To avoid incurring unnecessary cost, the project team set out to compare the results of
the manufacturer’s test settings with those produced by Boston Scientific’s more rigorous
standards for tension testing, and to demonstrate conclusively that adapting the catheter
tension testing process would not impact the strength of the pull wire. If this could be
shown to the regulators’ satisfaction, it would reduce both the amount of time and the
number of catheters needed to complete test method validation by leveraging its
existing ASTM tension testing standard.

How Minitab Helped

The project team decided to compare the mean pull-wire strength of each company’s
test settings using a 2-sample t-test. To ensure reliable test results, they used the Power
and Sample Size tools in Minitab and determined they would need to test 23 catheters
with the tension test settings from each facility.

The team gathered strength test data from a random sample of 23 catheters tested with
Boston Scientific’s more rigorous ASTM standards for tension testing and 23 catheters
tested with the tension test settings used by the original manufacturer.

Now the team needed to verify the data met two assumptions in order to produce
reliable results. First, according to general guidelines, each sample should fit a normal
distribution—a criterion that was successfully proven using Boston Scientific’s statistical
procedures. Second, because the variance of a sample influences its mean, the samples
needed to have statistically equivalent variance.

Minitab’s Statistics menu provides easy-to-use tools to evaluate data for both of these
conditions. The team used the 2 Variances test to quickly determine that their data met
the requirements for a reliable 2-sample t-test.

The chart above displays the variance of each data set and illustrates that the difference between them is not
statistically significant.
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The individual value plot above shows that although Boston Scientific’s production settings have a wider range of
results, the two means for tensile strength are nearly identical.

Minitab’s 2-sample t-test showed that the tensile strengths were not significantly
different. While performing the 2-sample t-test, the project team found that Minitab’s
Assistant feature—which provides on-demand explanations and recommendations in
addition to step-by-step guidance—gave them more confidence in their analysis and
results. “From the background provided in the Assistant, I learned that meeting the
assumption of normality for a 2-sample t-test is not critical when you have at least 15
units for testing,” says German Vindas, manufacturing engineer at Boston Scientific. “It
confirmed that our 23-unit sample size was more than adequate, which gave us great
confidence in our results.”

Results
The team’s 2-sample t-test demonstrated that both companies’ test settings for gauge
length produced equal tensile strengths, and the data they collected showed that the
pull wires in both sets of catheters met the 5-pound minimum. Based on the results,
regulators agreed that Boston Scientific could adapt the catheter test method validation
by leveraging its ASTM standard with absolute confidence that the new pull-wire tension
strength would continue to meet the standards set by the original manufacturer.

Vindas estimates that using the statistical tools in Minitab saved the team about a month
on this phase of transferring catheter production. The reduced time spent on this phase
slashed testing costs while allowing Boston Scientific to meet project deadlines and
move on to the next phase of Costa Rica’s regulatory approvals.

“With Minitab, the process was very straight forward,” says Vindas. “It saved us lots of
time and money, and the project was able to continue on schedule.”

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