Wireless communicative stent for follow-up of abdominal aortic aneurysm

An abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) is a dilatation of the aorta at the abdominal level, which rupture is a life threatening complication. Recent treatment of AAA consists in endovascular treatment with covered stent grafts. Despite improving devices, this treatment is still associated with close to 25% of failure related to persisting pressure into the excluded aneurismal sac. The follow-up becomes thus crucial and demands frequent examinations (CT-scan, IRM) which are not so liable given the complications. In order to evaluate the post-operative period of an AAA treatment, we designed a communicative stent, comprising of an integrated pressure sensor. This paper presents the conception of a communicative sensor, the elaboration of a numerical model, and the development of an experimental testbench constituting the aortic flux across an AAA and allowing the optimization and validation of the measurement principle.