IMPROVING THE MECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF BRAIDED SHAPE MEMORY POLYMER STENTS BY HEAT SETTING
Fabian Schreiber, Philipp Schuster, Mauricio Borinski, Felix Vogt, Rüdiger Blindt, Thomas Gries- General Materials Science
Abstract The aging population is one of the biggest challenges of the 21st century and so is the subsequent increase in patients with cardiovascular diseases. The state-of-the-art treatment for cardiovascular stenosis is an angioplasty in combination with stenting of the affected artery. Stents can be either laser cut out of a tube or an interwoven such as a braided structure. Furthermore, there are two groups of stents regarding their expansion behaviours: balloon expandable and self-expandable. Within this paper, a new approach to braiding stent-like structures out of a novel shape memory polymer fibre will be discussed. Furthermore, the heat treatment of the stent structure will be investigated to improve its characteristics such as radial stiffness.