Mechanics of 3D printed bioresorbable stents: A virtual testbed assessment.

Next-generation stents are expected to be manufactured from fully bioresorbable materials. Such stents can achieve the restoration of patency of occluded atherosclerotic arteries, before hydrolysing in the body following healing. There has been a sustained growth of research in the development of new biomaterials and manufacturing methods for such stents. Three-dimensional printing is one of the exciting fields for the manufacture of coronary BRS. Here, we show a virtual testing approach for the development of 3D printable coronary artery stents based on bioresorbable polymeric biomaterials. In the study, the authors designed 10 novel 3D printable stents and manufactured them using Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) 3D-printing technology. Also, a virtual testing approach based on finite element methods was used to characterize the in vivo structural response of the stents with a view to assessing the suitability of the stent designs for use in the restoration of patency for occluded coronary arteries. The approach presented here can represent a future preoperative management tool for interventional cardiologists to assess the structural performance of bespoke patient-specific 3D printable stent designs prior to manufacture and implantation at the occluded site