The first two generation scaffolds: bare metal stents (BMS) and drug eluting stents (DES), have been widely used in the treatment of coronary heart diseases. However, long term incidences of major adverse cardiovascular events and revascularization treatments are still high because of in-stent re-stenosis and thrombosis. These may be caused by chronic inflammations and vascular wall damages due to persistent metal stents stimulation. The eluting drugs within metal stents could also disturb normal growth of vascular endothelial cell, intima, tunica media, smooth muscle and epimysium. Therefore, several fully biodegradable scaffolds and drug carried stents had been manufactured using polymers polyester, polycarbonate and polyphosphate, etc. Recently, tissue and blood compatibility securities of present implanted artificial cardiovascular stents manufactured with copolymer materials had been confirmed. However, these stents could not meet the clinical demands because of the respective problems of degradation, material rigidity, flexibility and nonuniformity of support strength. This paper reviews the current and perspective application of polylactic acid (PLA), polyglycolic acid (PGA) and chitosan in the fabrication of fully biodegradable artificial coronary vascular scaffolds.
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