Structural Design of Vascular Stents: A Review

Abstract

Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PCI) is currently the most conventional and effective method for clinically treating cardiovascular diseases such as atherosclerosis. Stent implantation, as one of the ways of PCI in the treatment of coronary artery diseases, has become a hot spot in scientific research with more and more patients suffering from cardiovascular diseases. However, vascular stent implanted into vessels of patients often causes complications such as In-Stent Restenosis (ISR). The vascular stent is one of the sophisticated medical devices, a reasonable structure of stent can effectively reduce the complications. In this paper, we introduce the evolution, performance evaluation standards, delivery and deployment, and manufacturing methods of vascular stents. Based on a large number of literature pieces, this paper focuses on designing structures of vascular stents in terms of “bridge (or link)” type, representative volume unit (RVE)/representative unit cell (RUC), and patient-specific stent. Finally, this paper gives an outlook on the future development of designing vascular stents.

Fabrication of 3D GelMA Scaffolds Using Agarose Microgel Embedded Printing

“…Traditional scaffold materials (metals, ceramics, polymers) do not have these advantages [ 2 ]. With the application of the 3D printing technology in the field of tissue engineering, the preparation of hydrogel scaffolds has also entered the era of customization, becoming applicable in various fields such as personalized tissue repair of blood vessels [ 3 ], valves, skin [ 4 ], etc. Commonly used hydrogel materials include alginate, collagen, gelatin, chitosan.…”

Introduction of a New ex vivo Porcine Coronary Artery Model: Evaluation of the Direct Vascular Injury after Stent Implantation with and without Dogbone Effect

“…Today, computational and surrogate modeling is used to optimize the stent expansion behavior to minimize stent malposition and tissue stresses [11, 16, 17]. Up to now, large animal (pigs) experiments are the gold standard to test the function and the biological response of new stent/balloon designs [5].…”

“…injury score [IS]) that result in morphological changes of the stent such as "dogbone" effects, radial elastic recoil, and foreshortening [9][10][11]. In particular, the deployment of stents like a "dogbone" (shown in Fig.…”

Three-dimensional printing as a cutting-edge, versatile and personalizable vascular stent manufacturing procedure: Toward tailor-made medical devices

“…The stent bridges can have different shapes such as V, L, N, W, S shapes, etc., as well as multiple shapes all combined in the same structure ( Figure 11C ). These connections play an important role in the optimization of the final performance of the stent, especially in their 240 mechanical properties, as recently reviewed by Pan et al [ 82 ] Within these stents, it is possible to differentiate between “closed cells” and “open cells” ( Table 3 ) [ 28 ] . Nowadays, it is also possible to find commercial stents with different strut width in the same device, such as NIRxcell TM stent system ( Figure 11B ) and others with non-uniform cell sizes and shapes ( Figure 11D ).…”