Research - Summary

One of the main drawbacks of the currently used stents is balloon-related injury of both arteries and stents, leading to in-stent restenosis. There is also extensive research being conducted on polymer bioresorbable stents, that would temporarily expand the luminal area while letting the artery heal, and then degrade over time. However, due to the inferior mechanical properties of polymers compared to metals, struts of such stents need to be thicker, causing numerous problems and risks. Self-expanding 4D printed stents have the potential to reduce these shortcomings. Therefore, we propose an experimental evaluation of the medical effectiveness of such stent by the deployment of a 4D printed stent into stenosed silicone artery. Because the mechanical behaviour of silicone is not identical to that of an artery, numerical evaluation is also necessary. For that to be possible, a constitutive model of 4D printed material is need. Thus, extensive mechanical testing will be conducted, and a material model fitted. The stenting procedure will numerically be modelled, taking into account long-term growth and remodelling of an artery. This will also enable us to hypothesize on factors leading to in-stent restenosis.