Surface modification of cardiovascular materials and implants

Cardiovascular implants find wide clinical applications, making a great contribution to the treatment of cardiovascular diseases. Such devices, endovascular stents, artificial vascular grafts, prosthetic heart valves to name a few typical examples, have been the mainstay of cardiovascular surgery. However, failure cases of the implants still exist, which urge us to understand what has happened at the blood-contacting interface and how the tissues have responded during the post-implantation period. Aiming to eliminate these pathological events, various approaches of surface modification of the cardiovascular devices have been used in order to improve hemocompatibility and cytocompatibility. In this review, the blood–biomaterial interfacial events and the evolution of the surface modification strategies are discussed, together with the recent developments on the surface modification of cardiovascular materials like biomimetic extracellular matrix and accelerated endothelialization. These novel surface modification strategies open a new chapter on designing ideal blood-friendly implantable materials.