Percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) has undergone major advances including the evolution in stent technology, from bare metal stents (BMS), to their drug eluting counterparts, to the development of bioresorbable scaffolds (BRS). The primary notion of BRS was to facilitate complete vascular healing and restore normal endothelial function following the resorption of stent scaffold while providing equivalent mechanical properties of a metallic drug eluting stents (DES) in the earlier stages. BRS provide attractive physiologic advancements over the existing DES and have shown promising results in initial clinical studies albeit with small sample sizes. Their use has been primarily restricted to patients recruited in clinical trials with limited real-world applicability. Thus, data from larger randomised control trials is awaited. The major objective of this article is to review the evidence on BRS and identify their clinical applicability in current interventional practice.
Sidakpal Panaich - Department of Cardiology, Detroit Medical Center, Michigan, US
Theodore Schreiber - Department of Cardiology, Detroit Medical Center, Michigan, US
Cindy Grines - Department of Cardiology, Detroit Medical Center, Michigan, US
