ABSTRACT
As a major health burden, cardiovascular diseases continue to be the main causes of death worldwide. For patients suffering from severe heart diseases such as embolism, congenital heart defects, vascular stenosis, and heart failure, effective treatments increasingly rely on therapeutic devices. During the last decades, biomaterial and medical communities have optimized and introduced various materials, as well as structure design and fabrication, approaches. These developments have enhanced the therapeutic value of devices, and the clinical success has demonstrated great progress in re-establishing healthy blood circulation, implementing revascularization, and restoring cardiac hemodynamics. This chapter covers filter devices, thrombectomy devices, vascular closure devices, vascular stents, drug-coated balloons, artificial blood vessels, artificial heart valves, and artificial hearts. In this chapter, we summarize and compare the currently adopted/potential materials and methods that modulated the device properties of anti/pro-coagulation, anti-hyperplasia, mechanical support, etc. In addition, we identify the challenges cardiovascular therapeutic devices face and the opportunities that are emerging.
