Engineering Approaches to Prevent Blood Clotting from Medical Implants

Injectable and/or Implantable medical devices are widely used in the treatment of diseases. Among them, vascular stents provide the medical solution to treat blood clotting. However, traditional metallic stents, even with current improvements in anticoagulation properties, have potential drawbacks in local inflammation when first implanted into the body and undesirable protein adsorption and cell adhesion after a prolonged period of time in the body. In this perspective, we discuss several engineering approaches, including drug-eluting materials, polymeric and non-polymeric coatings, and surface modifications to coating materials that can be applied to the surface of medical implants to significantly improve the hemocompatibility. These coatings are expected to have a slow degradation rate with the ability to either load drugs or attach biomacromolecules to form an architecture that mimics the surrounding cells. In general, our perspective provides a current view on the achievements of hemo-compatible coatings and future trends in coating materials that will extend the life of the medical implants.