Drug-Eluting Resorbable Scaffolds: Design Considerations and Clinical Data

Drug-eluting resorbable scaffolds represent a transformative advancement in percutaneous vascular intervention, integrating the benefits of balloon angioplasty and drug-eluting stents into a single, transient device. These scaffolds are engineered to "leave nothing behind" by providing temporary mechanical support, facilitating vascular healing, and ultimately degrading benignly while restoring natural vessel function. Tailoring material degradation kinetics to align with specific physiologic demands is key. Clinical studies have been performed for both coronary and peripheral artery disease, and learnings from early device design have contributed to improvements in second-generation devices which are now either under clinical evaluation or approved for use.