Abstract
For the past few years, we have developed glassy carbon stents for sutureless intraluminal graft and have experienced their clinical applications to abdominal and thoracic aorta. We have noticed that psedointima was not found in the inner surface of glassy carbon stents, so we developed another kinds of stent. Three kinds of stents were developed for experimental implantation to the thoracic or abdominal aorta of nine beagle dogs. The developed stents were 1) four pieces of stainless steel bored stents with 300 micron in thickness 2) two pieces of laser bored stainless steel stents with 160 micron in thickness 3) three pieces of spiral stents made of shape memory alloy. After 3 to 6 months, the implanted animals were sacrificed and the surface of the stents were examined using a scanning electron microscope. We found pseudointima in all of the three kinds of stents. In one of three shapememory alloy stents, organized thrombi were found in the middle. All of the bored stainless steel stents were found free of thrombus and their pseudointimal formation were excellent and were thought to be best suitable for intraluminal prosthesis.
