Biocompatibility of coronary stent materials: effect of electrochemical polishing

Percutaneous Transluminal Coronary Revascularization (PTCR) is now a widely accepted treatment modality for atherosclerotic coronary artery disease. Current multicenter randomized trials comparing PTCR with the more invasive Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting could not show long-term significant survival differences. During the last two decades progress has been made to further optimize PTCR. The most logic approach to treat atherosclerotic coronary narrowings is to remove the atherosclerotic material using especially developed devices. Several trials, however, could not show a significant beneficial outcome after use of these devices compared to plain old balloon angioplasty. Another approach was to implant a coronary prothesis (stent), scaffolding the diseased coronary artery after PTCA. This approach resulted in a decreased restenosis rate at follow-up. The beneficial effects of stenting, however, was not found to be related to the inhibition of the neointimal cellular proliferation after vascular injury, but simply to be the mechanical result of overstretching of the treated vessel segment. The most important remaining clinical problem after stenting remains the neointimal hyperplasia within the stent, resulting in a significant stent narrowing in 13 to 30 % of patients. Further efforts to improve the clinical results of coronary stenting should focus on the reduction of this neointimal hyperplasia. Neointimal hyperplasia after stent implantation results from (1) a healing response to the injury caused by the stent implantation and (2) a foreign body response to the stent itself. Factors that seem to influence the neointimal hyperplastic response are genetic, local disease related, stent delivery related and stent related factors. Biocompatibilisation of coronary stents by looking for more biocompatible metal alloys, optimized surface characteristics and optimized stent designs should result in a better late patency. Furthermore drug eluting and radioactive stents are under development in order to decrease the neointimal hyperplastic response.