With every heart beat, our blood vessels expand and contract, something known as pulsatile motion. When commonly used metal stents are placed within vessels, they prevent those vessels from exhibiting pulsatile motion. This may be a cause of or a compounding factor for restenosis and may even lead to a cardiovascular disease to develop faster.
Elixir Medical, a Milpitas, California firm, has developed a drug eluting stent that structurally behaves the same as a traditional metal stent, but after a few months becomes more flexible, allowing pulsatile motion to take over the vessel. The so-called bioadaptive DynamX cobalt chromium stent has special flexible segments throughout its architecture that are held rigid by the polymer that releases the Novolimus antiproliferative drug embedded in it. The polymer is slowly eaten away by the body, releasing the drug, but also eventually letting loose the flexible segments. Once these segments are freed, they change the dynamics of the stent, making it significantly more pliable. Beside helping to liberate the vessel to move naturally, the new design may help avoid fractures to the stent itself, a fairly common occurence.
There’s still a ways to go for the DynamX to prove the benefit of allowing pulsatile motion to continue within stented vessels, but that was practically impossible before actually building such a device. We’re looking forward to finding out and hoping the results are positive for the company and patients treated with this technology.
Here’s a company video outlining the features and benefits of the new stent:
Product page: DynamX…
Via: Elixir Medical…
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