Cardiovascular stent design and wall shear stress distribution in coronary stented arteries

The stent is a major breakthrough in the treatment of coronary artery diseases. The permanent vascular implant of a stent, however, changes the intra-stent blood flow haemodynamics. There is a growing consensus that the stent implant may change the artery wall shear stress distribution and hence trigger the restenosis process. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has been widely used to analyse haemodynamics in stented arteries. In this Letter, CFD models were developed to investigate the effects of stent design pattern and strut geometry, respectively, on the wall shear stress distribution in coronary stented arteries. Assessment of the potential restenosis risk was primarily based on the wall shear stress distribution. Results show that the stent design pattern alone does not have a significant impact on the stent haemodynamic behaviour. Wall shear stress is very sensitive to strut thickness, while varying the strut width or crown radius has very little effect. The proposed methodology and findings will provide great insight for future optimisation of stent design to reduce the risk of restenosis.