The stent tech-race against heart attack

When it comes to the tiny scaffold-like stents inserted to unblock the clogged arteries of heart disease patients, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

The chances of a coronary stent failing are about 10 per cent, but if they fail the consequence of a sudden blockage can be catastrophic. For example while the risk of a blood clot forming on a stent is only 0.6 per cent per year, if it occurs the risk of death from a sudden heart attack is a sobering 40 per cent.

These potentially deadly consequences of failure are driving a global technological race to improve stents using everything from dissolving materials, embedded drugs, personalised 3D-printed devices, and even nanotechnology that could deliver treatments like anti-cholesterol drugs direct to arteries.

“We are dealing here with an uncommon complication, but it is a dreaded complication, so we need to be doing all we can to continually improve on stent technology,” says Professor Peter Barlis, cardiologist and medical researcher based at St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne and the University of Melbourne. He stands on the frontline of this technological race.