Stents That Save Lives: The Evolving Science Behind Coronary Artery Repair

Abstract:: Coronary heart disease represents the leading cause of mortality globally. Over the past four decades, angioplasty, along with the implantation of coronary stents, has become the benchmark for restoring arterial function. Stents were added to the National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM) by the health ministry in July 2016. The early success of stenting procedures for revascularizing targeted lesions enabled their widespread adoption in interventional cardiology and later shaped the current framework for coronary interventional methods. Coronary stents are expandable, cylindrical metallic devices that are inserted into coronary arteries obstructed by an underlying cardiovascular disorder. With the launch of coronary stents, invasive coronary dissection and vascular recoil were prevented by the stents' expandable metallic framework, which prevents adverse alterations. This review covers recent advances in coronary stent development and materials, focusing on innovations that have emerged from the initial generation of bare-metal, bioresorbable-metal, and polymer stents to drug-eluting stents. Further, the present chapter discusses the most recent pre-clinical and clinical evidence for the efficacy of advanced metallic stents and drug-eluting material candidates. Moreover, the chapter reviews strategies to improve the clinical performance of technology-based stents and their evaluation.