The Effects on the Strength of UBM Extracellular Matrix Under Stent Loading: An Experimental and Numerical Study

Arterial diseases are a common cause of death in the western world. The last two decades has seen vast improvements in scanning, screening, prognosis and symptom recognition, resulting in a greater number of treatments. A common treatment procedure used is bypass grafting which currently utilize synthetic graft materials, internal thoracic artery, and autologous vein. These treatments are invasive surgical procedures and can have low patency. An alternative treatment for these conditions is endovascular surgery. However these devices have problems such as restenois, migration and stent fracture. Improved design and drug elution have been utilized to enhance the performance, with limited success. The application of Tissue engineering scaffolds to enhance device performance has had limited studies. A Number of studies have looked at Small Intestine Submucosa in stenting applications [1, 2]. One study implanted an ECM (SIS) stent-graft into 8 sheep. The study concluded that the ECM stent graft successfully treated simple and ruptured AAA’s. Another study investigated a stent graft arrangement in the femoral arteries of sheep. The study found that SIS coated stent preformed better than that of PTFE covered stent grafts.