[Clinical strategies for development of intracoronary stents]

Intracoronary stenting is an effective measure to prevent PTCA-associated complications in clinical practice, appearing to be superior to all other interventional techniques. However, the intrinsic thrombogenicity and permanent stimulation to injured vessel wall tissue of all the current available metallic stents may result in inhospital events such as thrombosis, (sub)acute coronary closure, emergency bypass surgery, hemorrhagic complications, pseudoaneurysm, or even vessel perforation), and restenosis. In order to settle the above-mentioned problems, the authors point out that intravascular stenting in combination with target drug delivery, or ionic radiation, or gene therapy (direct gene transfer, antisense oligodeoxynucleotides, etc); seeding of genetically reformed endothelial cells on metallic stents; study and development of new materials for biodegradable stents, controlled drug release system; temporary metallic stents; and locally site-specific drug delivery system take facilitated new clinical strategies for the development of intracoronary stents.