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Today the most popular approach for the prevention of the restenosis consists in the use of the drug eluting stents. The stent acts as a source of drug, from a coating or from a reservoir, which is transported into and through the artery wall. In this study, the behaviour of a model of a hydrophilic drug (heparin) released from a coronary stent into the arterial wall is investigated. The presence of the specific binding site action is modelled using a reversible chemical reaction that explains the prolonged presence of drug in the vascular tissue. An axi-symmetric model of a single stent strut is considered. First an advection-diffusion problem is solved using the finite element method. Then a simplified model with diffusion only in the arterial wall is compared with: (i) a model including the presence of reversible binding sites in the vascular wall and (ii) a model featuring a drug reservoir made of a degradable polymeric matrix. The results show that the inclusion of a reversible binding for the drug leads to delayed release curves and that the polymer erosion affects the drug release showing a quicker elution of the drug from the stent.

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