A decade of modelling drug release from arterial stents

Abstract

Drug-eluting stents have revolutionised the treatment of coronary artery disease. These small medical devices have attracted much interest over the past decade from biologists, clinicians, engineers and mathematicians alike. This article provides a comprehensive review of the modelling of drug release from arterial stents and the subsequent drug transport through arterial tissue, and acts as a useful reference equally for those who are already involved in drug-eluting stents research and for those who are starting out in the field. Assembled in this review are the main models of drug release and arterial drug transport that have been published in the literature to date. Many of the models presented in this paper have evolved from drug transport models in other applications. Furthermore, the ideas presented in this review may also be extended to other drug-delivery applications, such as drug coated balloons, transdermal patches and therapeutic contact lenses.

Does anisotropy promote spatial uniformity of stent-delivered drug distribution in arterial tissue?

“…These PCIs, commonly known as angioplasty, are non-surgical procedures used to treat narrowed arteries as a result of coronary heart disease (CHD). The most common of these PCIs is the insertion of a small mesh-like device called a stent [1], to act as a scaffold and widen the lumen. Some of the methods of reducing restenosis include directly coating the stent with a drug (the so-called drug-eluting stent) and, more recently, by inflating a drug-coated balloon at the required site [2,3].…”

“…A variety of models for R have been reported (see [1] for a review of these). However, there exists experimental evidence that within each layer anisotropy may be important.…”

The Surface Modification Methods for Constructing Polymer-Coated Stents

“…The experiments evidence that stents may be subjected to an event known as "late stent thrombosis" that happens one or more years of poststenting, where the blood clots inside the stent [3,15]. To tackle these challenges, the concept of drugeluting stents (DESs) was introduced to restrain the occurrence of restenosis and thrombosis by allowing the release of the drug to be gradual and permitting the drug delivery to be sustained over many weeks [3,16]. Though DESs have achieved great success, material-related problems still exist in the treatment of cardiovascular diseases [17].…”

Modelling of multilayer biological medium under molecular communication paradigm

“…Each such region can be considered to be a separate layer with distinct diffusion coefficient and thickness. Some of the examples for such multilayer biological media include transport of drugs across the blood-brain barrier [14] and release of drugs from Drug-Eluting Stent (DES) thorough the layers of coronary artery, i.e., the tunica intima, the tunica media, and the tunica adventitia layers [15].…”