Wellspect® LoFric® Origo™
Product Overview
Available Lengths: 15.75 inches (Male), 11.81 inches (Pediatric)
Available French Sizes: Fr 8, 10, 12, 14 (Male only), 16 (Male only), 18 (Male only)
Available Tips: Straight and Coudé
Pros
A stiff hydrophilic catheter that comes with an insertion sleeve pre-packaged in a place where you can access it in order to limit contact contamination.
The soft-touch plastic used in the funnel and the sleeve are pretty nice to the touch.
A lubricious coating that is the hallmark of the LoFric line of catheters.
Our Verdict
This is a good, stiff hydrophilic catheter. It doesn’t come ready-to-use like the Bard Magic3 Go or the Coloplast Speedicath, but it’s a good deal stiffer than the former and a good deal smoother than the latter. It has a more substantial insertion sleeve than the GC Glide.
Cons
The insertion aid has a slit that might result in some contact contamination, which could lead to infection.
The packaging isn’t accessible for folks with limited dexterity.
The adhesive backing on the packaging isn’t particularly strong so don’t rely on it to hold your catheter up on a wall.
Material
The Wellspect® LoFric® Origo™ is a male hydrophilic catheter that is made out of a material called polyolefin-based elastomer (POBE). Based on promotional material online, polyolefins generally exhibit good biocompatibility (meaning that it doesn’t harm living tissue). POBE is a catch-all term, however, so it’s hard to comment on the specific material used for this catheter.
The catheter is coated with a hydrophilic coating made out of salt and polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP). More on PVP below in the lubrication section!
Flexibility
The LoFric Origo™ is one of the stiffest male catheters that we’ve tested, up there with the Coloplast SpeediCath. It droops down 7.5 inches and extends out 10.75 inches. This means it’ll be easier to insert this catheter, especially with the insertion sleeve that comes with the catheter. One drawback to a stiffer catheter is the possibility that its use can lead to urethral trauma (the study in question focuses on indwelling catheters, but the logic should hold for intermittent catheters).
Packaging
The LoFric Origo™’s packaging is a patterned blue and, like the LoFric Sense™, doesn’t look like a medical device, giving it a pretty discreet appearance. The packaging is opened with a pull tab that doesn’t have easy-open features which is slightly disappointing.
The packaging does a great job of limiting the exposure of the catheter to the elements and to any germs that might be in the elements. You can take the catheter out of its packaging using the insertion sleeve.
The packaging is billed as fitting into a pocket, which it does if you wrap the thinner part of the packaging around the area where the funnel, insertion aid, and water sachet is kept. We’re not sure if that… really counts? You can be the judge.
The other side of the package features another pull tab with an adhesive backing – this can help you stick the entire package on the wall to keep your hands free. Just make sure that you don’t accidentally pull off the entire pull tab when trying to expose the adhesive part like we did.
Lubrication
PVP is the hydrophilic coating that gives this catheter its lubricious quality. PVP is generally considered to be safe, but can cause allergic reactions in rare cases – so check with your physician if you’re unsure as to whether or not this catheter is right for you. The sterile water included with the catheter does a good job of hydrating the catheter so that it’s easy to insert, but is certainly not as easily pop-able as the marketing language claims – we required much more than a gentle squeeze to open ours.
Wellspect uses its trademarked Urotonic™ Surface Technology on all of its LoFric® catheters. It refers to the company’s efforts to match the salt content of the catheter’s surface to the salt content in urine, which helps the water on the catheter’s surface stay there throughout the entire catheterization procedure.
An academic study that aimed to develop a model that could be used to understand just how slippery different urinary catheters are found two things of note. The amount of water found in the catheter coating did not impact how lubricious it was, and when analyzing lubriciousness as a function of how much force was required to insert and remove catheters, LoFric catheters exhibited some of the greatest lubricity in all catheters tested. The authors went on to conclude, however, that a different kind of catheter – the Aquacath (produced by Seton Continence Care, which doesn’t seem to exist anymore) “possess the most appropriate physicochemical properties for use in intermittent catheterization.
Insertion
Instructional videos from the manufacturer can be found here.
The LoFric® Origo™ comes with a packaged insertion sleeve that is more substantial than the LoFric® Primo™’s insertion sleeve. This sleeve (and the catheter funnel) features a similar matte plastic to the LoFric® Sense™’s funnel; the slight texture makes it pleasant to hold and handle.
The insertion sleeve has a slit in it, possibly to assist in packaging the sleeve around the funnel, or possibly to increase its flexibility to enable users to tightly grip their catheters. Either way, the slit may defeat the purpose of having an insertion sleeve, since you might accidentally end up directly touching your catheter.
It’s also important to remember that while insertion sleeves do reduce the risk of contaminating the catheter with whatever germs might be on your hands, they don’t prevent your catheters from transporting germs commonly found on the urethral opening to your bladder. If UTIs are a concern, it’s a good idea to wipe down the urethral opening with antiseptic wipes prior to catheterizing!
Adverse Events
There were 2 complaints filed to the FDA about the LoFric® Origo™ catheter in 2019. Both were related to urinary bleeding.
The review of FDA Medical Device Reports from 2019 provides a limited snapshot of recent product performance in the marketplace.