ABSTRACT
Bioresorbable stents (BRSs) represent an intuitively appealing technology with potential to solve some of the issues associated with the use of metallic drug eluting stents (DESs). Intravascular imaging techniques, such as intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) and optical coherence tomography (OCT), are utilized to characterize BRSs in vivo and revealed valuable insights of vascular healing after BRSs implantation. Special attention is required for safety assessment of multicomponent devices employing BRS backbones with either permanent or biodegradable coatings of different origin compared to the stent backbone. Inflammation must be assessed in the early, intermediate, and late phases after implantation of a BRSs. Inflammation should be judged on the basis of acute and chronic inflammatory cells, which mostly consist of neutrophils/monocytes as an acute response to injury or the foreign material and lymphocytes/macrophages/giant cells chronically for clearing of biodegradation products. Intravascular imaging techniques, such as ultrasound (IVUS) and optical coherence tomography (OCT) are also broadly used in preclinical studies evaluating BRSs.
