THE INFLUENCE OF POST ANGIOPLASTY STENT IMPLANT PROFILE ON ARTERIAL WALL STRESS

One of the main causes for post angioplasty arterial resteno-sis is the excessive stress induced in the arterial wall during and after the medical intervention. The closed stent is introduced in the artery wrapped around the deflated balloon catheter and is expanded in the final position by inflating the balloon. Unfortu-nately, this process also stretches the arterial wall. Additionally, for the stent to be successful, its diameter must be slightly larger than the diameter of the inflated artery. The stent is usually a dense mesh of interconnected beams. Therefore, it is often con-sidered that it applies a constant pressure to the artery / stent interface. However, in reality each beam individually presses against the innermost layer of the artery (intima). The current study proposes a model, which predicts the ar-terial wall subsurface stress field due to individual stent beams