Diane Newman: Today I’m going to do a little bit of a show and tell and by that I mean, I have with me, Tessa Huang, who’s a manufacturer of intermittent catheters in mainland China. I met her recently when I visited China, I was teaching urology nurses in the mainland and I came upon her catheters and I was really impressed with her quality. So I’ve asked her here, to come and show and tell us about her product.
Would you do that Tessa, please?
Tessa Huang: Yeah, I’m very happy to. I’m very glad too. So currently I show two main styles of our catheter. So actually we provide uncoated catheter and hydrophilic catheter. For uncoated catheter, normally the catheter was packed individually. When the patient they need to use the catheter, they need to have one pack of lubricant jelly to put in, to use them together. So the usage sometimes is quite complicated and not so easy for the patients, to operate the whole procedure without touching the catheter or just keep the whole procedure sterile. So-
Diane Newman: Yeah you are right, they would have to carry the catheter, the little pack of lubricant right?
Tessa Huang: Yes.
Diane Newman: And if they didn’t have the lubricant, what we sometimes found was they would not lubricate their catheter, which is really not safe.
Tessa Huang: Yeah and sometimes they also needed gloves and they made things quite complicated. So, we made improvement on our catheter, we put very important lubricant jelly and something to replace the function for their gloves inside the catheter altogether. So we put them altogether. So, you can see that this catheter includes an intermittent catheter, uncoated.
Diane Newman: Mm-hmm.
Tessa Huang: And a pack of sterile lubricating jelly in one no touch sleeve.
Diane Newman: So this is like the patient kinda holds on to this as they pass the catheter so they really don’t touch it, do they?
Tessa Huang: Yeah, yeah correctly. So it is very easy for the patient to just burst the lubricant jelly , yeah the jelly come out so they can push the jelly alongside the catheter.
Diane Newman: Oh yeah, that is nice.
Tessa Huang: So, the catheter will be lubricated very fluently, then they open the package and-
Diane Newman: And this is a fourteen French, right so the final’s the same color as a fourteen French-
Tessa Huang: So, wait, this is six French.
Diane Newman: Oh. Six French?
Tessa Huang: Six French so you can see-
Diane Newman: Oh, that’s a really thin one.
Tessa Huang: Yeah a very small one. So this is a better, we have been selling very well in transmarket many parents use this catheter, to catheter their little kids very easily so the caregiver, they can hold this sleeve and they can just move this sleeve to anywhere they feel comfortable and they take it out to use-
Diane Newman: Oh yeah so they never really touched the catheter-
Tessa Huang: Yes.
Diane Newman: That is, your right, that is really perfect for parents, who are catheterizing a child.
Tessa Huang: Yeah.
Diane Newman: You don’t want them to touch the catheter and you don’t want them to have to put on gloves and all that either.
Tessa Huang: Yeah, so they can just operate the whole procedure-
Diane Newman: You can see there’s all that lubricants on there too.
Tessa Huang: Yeah, we can see that the lubricant.
Diane Newman: Well that’s really nice, that is-
Tessa Huang: It’s spreading very evenly on the catheter and the performance is quite good. So this is a very convenient way for catheters to carry on the intermittent catheterization daily.
Diane Newman: You have several lengths here, huh? So this is a long one right-
Tessa Huang: Yeah, this is for male mainly, but normally if the intermittent catheterization cannot be carried on by the patient herself, so normally we were recommended caregiver, they use the longer one, yeah.
Diane Newman: Mm-hmm.
Tessa Huang: And this is a, just a common mainly for pediatric but actually its very interesting, some men would use this length when they are driving the car so they don’t need such a long one, they can use this shorter one to pee in the car and that makes things much more-
Diane Newman: Yes, you know you bring up something so true, I mean we don’t often recommend it but I have many patients who tell me they cath themselves well some of them are sales people, so they’re in their car a lot and they catheterize in the car. And you’re right, sometimes a long ones can be quite a problem.
Tessa Huang: Yes, so the female one is too short, but this length is quite appropriate for them to carry the catheterization in car, so it’s very interesting. And this is for female, this is the-
Diane Newman: Much shorter one, right?
Tessa Huang: Yeah and for female actually we provide two style. One style for this one we don’t contain a sleeve, but sometimes we also provide another style we contain the sleeve. Because we found that the clinical practitioner, that some patient they may be a little fat, so they would feel so comfortable to find a sleeve on it would be easier for them to hold the catheter-
Diane Newman: Oh really?
Tessa Huang: And not to touch-
Diane Newman: Touch the catheter.
Tessa Huang: Yes.
Diane Newman: Now, what are these products here, so these are smaller French sizes I see.
Tessa Huang: Mm-hmm.
Diane Newman: And I can see really that application.
Tessa Huang: Mm-hmm.
Diane Newman: You know one thing I found when I was in China, you really have a quite a population with Spina Bifida. So you do have children that have neurogenic bladders, that need catheterization for bladder drainage.
Tessa Huang: Yeah.
Diane Newman: Now what are these, tell us about these ones here then. These are a little bit bigger diameter, correct?
Tessa Huang: Yep and this hydrophilic coated catheter.
Diane Newman: Oh really.
Tessa Huang: So, the catheter we feel that it looks quite similar just as uncoated catheter, but actually it contains a hydrophilic coating on the catheter itself. So when the catheter is dry, the coating is very quiet and it was not activated, but when we burst through water…
Diane Newman: That was very easy.
Tessa Huang: Yeah, very easy to burst the water-
Diane Newman: You can see the water
Tessa Huang: Yeah the water goes out very quickly and-
Diane Newman: It lubricated and activates the coating?
Tessa Huang: Yeah so the catheter becomes very slippery. And it’s easy for them to open and we can see that we have a hole and they can also adhere.
Diane Newman: Yeah so they can put that,
Tessa Huang: Adhesive
Diane Newman: Yeah they can put that maybe on the wall right next when they’re cathing huh?
Tessa Huang: Yes correct, so it’s easy that they open it and they can take the catheter out by also still using this sleeve.
Diane Newman: Mm-hmm
Tessa Huang: So-
Diane Newman: That’s nice.
Tessa Huang: The sleeve can be put-
Diane Newman: I want to feel this, one thing that why I’d asked Tessa is when she showed me this catheter while I was in China, I was very, very impressed with the coating.
Tessa Huang: Yeah, the coating is very-
Diane Newman: It’s not like we have some catheters in the US as very slippery. The other interesting thing is to it that the eyes, I don’t know if you can see that but the eyes are really kinda nice and smooth to the tip.
Tessa Huang: Yeah, we-
Diane Newman: And because that’s important.
Tessa Huang: Mm-hmm.
Diane Newman: Sometimes the eyes, holes in the tip of the catheter which of course the urine comes through to drain through and drain the urine out the bladder, but sometimes because they have to puncture holes right, they can be rough.
Tessa Huang: Yep.
Diane Newman: And that can cause trauma. But this one really is smooth.
Tessa Huang: We have done a lot of improvements on the eyelets and we ensure that each one of our catheters, the eyelets edge is very smooth, because we understand the requirement of other catheterization. Patients need to catheterize so many times every day and during the whole time. So to protect, they don’t have the trauma is very, very important.
And I would like to also emphasize another good point of what our catheter is for; the tipping. We have a very careful study on the tipping. We hope that the tipping is very smooth firstly, but the shape should be good enough for the insertion, but it cannot be too straight-
Diane Newman: Yeah, so you don’t want it really, really flexible because what happens, your saying is that it will bend, no this is nice I agree with you.
Tessa Huang: Yeah.
Diane Newman: And you know especially with men because when you take this out, you don’t want it just flopping all around, so you wanna make sure that when your passing it and men would do that basically that, that tip stays pretty stable and I don’t want to say rigid, but rigid enough so that it can be passed very easily.
Tessa Huang: Yes, correctly, yes.
Diane Newman: So I, coming from the US, I have not encountered really any manufacturers in China so Tessa, when I met you I really thought going over your products you know they were really quite impressive. And she’s right, this is a really nice added thing is that there’s adhesive here so the patient doesn’t have to hold this while they remove it, but they can adhere that to, some of my patients put it on their bathroom wall next to them and their toilet, and then they cath and drain the urine in the toilet, but it’s a really nice feature this, it’s very good.
Now what about these other two here?
Tessa Huang: So, these other two are also the shortest one is for female and this one
Diane Newman: So, this is some kind of concept you’ve got?
Tessa Huang: Yeah, they’re the same-
Diane Newman: And it’s the same concept with the-
Tessa Huang: With the sleeve
Diane Newman: The sleeve and also the fluid that activates the hydrophilic.
Tessa Huang: Yes.
Diane Newman: Would you show us again, just one more time?
Tessa Huang: Okay. So the first strip that we burn the water sash, then we push the water sash just a very light, you don’t need to push it very hard. Then the water goes out.
Diane Newman: And then it activates the coating of this catheter?
Tessa Huang: Yeah, so we can just shake the catheter a few times, so that’s enough.
Diane Newman: And then you open it?
Tessa Huang: Then you open the back, you can hold it open to make the connector, we can see the connector so we pull it out, then we hold the sleeve and we can use it.
Diane Newman: Right, that’s very nice.
Tessa Huang: Thank you.
Diane Newman: Well I wanna thank you Tessa for presenting your products to us and sharing it with our international audience. You know I think a lot of us are not aware of what’s going on in China, especially with urology patients. I know I’ve been there now several times teaching, I’ve been really impressed with your medical care in China and I’m excited that, that we are seeing more and more nurses being trained for urology because I know from talking with them and visiting that they’re many patients that have bladder dysfunction. And it’s nice to see that you’ve really developed a company to answer that need as far as catheterization. So I really thank you for coming.
Tessa Huang: It’s really my pleasure, that I can come here to share some of our experiences with you in the global market and also our new work in Chinese market.
Diane Newman: Well thanks so much.
Tessa Huang: You’re very welcome.