Smart catheter for stent placement

Atherosclerosis, a form of heart disease in which arteries narrow, is the primary cause of mortality in the industrialized world. Enclovascular stenting is a form of treatment used to fix this problem. It involves the placement of pencil-lead-sized tubular scaffolds inside the coronary arteries. There they are plastically expanded and remain as permanent implants. Unfortunately, the stent's thin walls image poorly under angiography (X-ray), making it difficult to determine when the stent is optimally expanded within the artery. This can lead to overinflation of the balloon catheters used to expand the stents, resulting in injury to the arterial wall. This damage has been linked to restenosis, the most common failure mode of stenting. We have developed an instrumented catheter that can detect stent/vessel apposition pressure, and thus prevent vessel injury.