Descrizione principale (Inglese)

Metallic stents have been largely used over the last decades to treat vascular diseases like coronary artery or peripheral vessel stenosis. Although they remain the gold standard for vascular treatment, they are subjected to in-vivo complications such as corrosion, structural failure, fractures, and restenosis due especially to the material which is used. Polymeric stents were developed as an alternative to replace commercial metallic ones presenting several failures caused especially by the used metals. Among those materials, the polyethylene terephthalate (PET) have been used to develop stents since PET is suitable for several biomedical uses such as vascular prosthesis. Braiding technique was used since it provides flexible structures. In this paper methods and materials for the development and characterization of PET braided stents were given and the main results were highlighted. Results bring out that PET braided stents show very promising structural and mechanical performances comparing to metallic stents. They guarantee in particular a good flexibility and stability to cyclic loadings predicting their long term behavior. As a conclusion, PET-braided vascular stents show a huge potential to replace commercial stents but their manufacturing parameters should be carefully chosen. Keywords: Polymeric stents, non-biodegradable, PET, braiding.