Functionalised Cardiovascular Stents

Cardiovascular disease is a major cause of mortality in the western world and about half of these deaths are caused by coronary artery disease. One of the most commonly used interventions to treat arterial blockages is to deploy an arterial stent to keep the vessel open. Traditionally, some cardiovascular stents have been associated with serious side-effects, such as thrombosis.

This book describes the fundamentals of cardiovascular stents, technologies to functionalize their surfaces and the market status of these important implants. The chapters provide specific focus on the production and evolution of cardiovascular stents, providing essential knowledge for researchers on advances in the field and knowledge of how cardiovascular stents are currently being "functionalized" in order to improve their biocompatibility and minimize negative outcomes in vivo.

Part One: Fundamentals of cardiovascular stents 1. Overview of cardiovascular stent designs 2. Fundamentals of bare metal stents 3. Development of drug eluting stents (DES) 4. Polymer-free drug-eluting stents 5. Fundamentals of bioresorbable stents 6. Bioabsorbable metallic stents

Part Two: Coatings and surface modification of cardiovascular stents 7. Physico-chemical stent surface modifications 8. Chemical vapor deposition of cardiac stents 9. Polymer coatings for biocompatibility and reduced nonspecific adsorption 10. Coating stability for stents 11. Simple one-step covalent immobilisation of bioactive agents without use of chemicals on plasma-activated low thrombogenic stent coatings

Part three: Biofunctionalisation of cardiovascular stent surfaces 12. Chemistry of targeted immobilisation of biomediators 12. In vitro coating of cardiovascular stents with cells (EPCs) 13. Functionalized cardiovascular stents: Cardiovascular stents incorporated with stem cells 14. Nitric oxide donor delivery 15. Immobilization of peptides on cardiovascular stent 16. Immobilisation of antibodies on cardiovascular stents