Wellspect® LoFric® Sense™
Product Overview
Available Lengths: 5.9 inches (Female)
Available French Sizes: Fr 8, 10, 12, 14
Available Tips: Straight
Pros
A nicely textured funnel paired with a stiff catheter make for excellent control.
Wellspect gets props off the bat for designing a product specifically for women.
The LoFric line of catheters earns praise for their coating and lubrication technology.
Our Verdict
This is a catheter made exclusively for women – there aren’t too many of those around. It gets points for its enlarged grip and stiff catheter. A very solid choice if you don’t have limited dexterity.
Cons
The packaging isn’t intended for individuals with limited dexterity.
Material
The Wellspect® LoFric® Sense™ is a hydrophilic catheter specifically designed for women 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
This catheter is very stiff! 0 inches of drooping, with a 4.25-inch extension. Impressive. That means it’s easier to insert this catheter without it accidentally entering the vaginal canal – this catheter goes where you want it to. 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 Sense™’s packaging is a feminine purple and looks the least like a medical device out of all of the catheters that we’ve reviewed on this site. Wellspect bills the LoFric Sense™ as having a discreet, non-medical design, and it definitely shows. The packaging is opened with a pull tab that doesn’t have easy-open features.
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.
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.
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.
Female catheters are shorter than male catheters because female urethras are shorter. The catheters are generally stiffer due to their decreased length and easier to handle and insert. There is still the worry of pathogens residing on or around the urethral opening, and for women, there’s a unique challenge of making sure that the catheter doesn’t get inserted into the vaginal canal. To maximize users’ ability to handle the LoFric Sense™, Wellspect has enlarged the funnel, giving users more surface area and a matte texture to grip their catheter with. There are other female catheters that feature a similar englarged funnel – the Bard® Magic3 GO® is one example of this.
Adverse Events
There were 2 complaints filed to the FDA about the LoFric® Sense™ catheter in 2019. One of the complaints involved a user having a bladder spasm in the middle of catheterization, causing the catheter to snap into two parts; the user had to go to the hospital to get the catheter removed. The other complaint detailed that the user in question had abrasions in the bladder, though no visual defects could be detected on the catheter in question, so the jury is out on what actually caused this bad experience.
The review of FDA Medical Device Reports from 2019 provides a limited snapshot of recent product performance in the marketplace.