Effect of Stent Design Parameters on Fluid and Structural Mechanics in Coronary Arteries

As undergraduates at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, our senior design team has been developing new arterial stent designs using computational, experimental and flow characterizations. Coronary artery stenting has become a popular alternative to bypass surgery due to its relatively low cost and short recovery time. There are approximately one million of these procedures performed each year. At the beginning of 2006, drug eluting stents (DES) accounted for 90% of stenting procedures; this number dropped below 75% by the end of 2006. The initial popularity of DES was due to their effective reduction in restenosis compared to the first generation of stents, bare-metal stents. Recently, the makers of DES have agreed that, compared with bare-metal stents, there is a small, but significant increase in the rate of stent thrombosis for both the Cypher (Johnson & Johnson) and Taxus (Boston Scientific) stents, beginning about 12 months after implantation [1].