A new flow diverter stent for direct treatment of intracranial aneurysm

The use of a stand-alone flow diverter (FD) stent has demonstrated itself as an efficacious endovascular approach to intracranial aneurysm treatment. FD stents that are currently available adopt an interwoven braided design. The relatively low radial stiffness intrinsic to this design could cause difficulty in deployment and poor stent-wall apposition, leading to high complication rates. A new FD stent is proposed to overcome the problems of the interwoven FD stents. The new device is manufactured from a Nitinol tube through a laser-cutting technique, and its unique structure allows for both low porosity and high packaging efficiency. Computational simulation using Abaqus has been conducted to investigate the radial stiffness and longitudinal flexibility of the new device. The new device exhibits high radial stiffness when compared to interwoven FD stents and superior longitudinal flexibility. Results from on-going in-vivo experiments and CFD simulations have also demonstrated the efficacy of the new device as a FD stent.