Stent thrombosis: a clinical perspective

The invention of intracoronary stents greatly increased the safety and applicability of percutaneous coronary interventions. At this time, >1 million coronary stent implantations are performed each year in the United States. But together with the growing use of stents, stent thrombosis, the most feared complication after stent implantation, has emerged as an important entity to understand and prevent. Adjunct pharmacological therapy, stent design, and deployment technique have been adjusted ever since to reduce its occurrence. The current clinical overview of stent thrombosis ranges from its pathophysiology to current state-of-the-art technical and pharmacological recommendations to avoid this complication.