[The new biomaterials of embolization: the shift to degradable]

During the last decade, the interest of degradable embolics has considerably grown as alternatives for the currently-used permanent embolics: no permanent foreign body, recanalisation for repeat embolization, complete drug delivery in chemoembolization. Their design is not trivial since a lot of requirements need to be satisfied. The degradable embolics should be easily suspended in physiological solutions and contrast media, injectable in catheters with small internal lumen and they have to recover their size and shape after injection, as for any embolic. Moreover, they need to be loadable with various drugs, and their degradation has to be achieved in a given time before the onset of a chronic inflammatory response and vessel wall remodeling. Various approaches have been tested on diverse materials over the last years and have produced interesting results that make it possible to claim that the revolution of the degradable embolic has begun.