Preparation of 4D printed peripheral vascular stent and its degradation behavior under fluid shear stress after deployment
Xianli Wang, Yue Zhang, Peiqi Shen, Zhaojun Cheng, Chenglin Chu, Feng Xue, Jing Bai
Abstract
and a recovery ratio of 85.3-93.4%, respectively, which was verified to be wall thickness dependent. The stents were then implanted in simulated blood vessels with minimal microstructural damage at 60 °C followed by 8-week degradation tests. The results showed the microstructure damage caused by deployment could accelerate the degradation of stents faster than fluid shear stress. Furthermore, we conducted microstructural analysis and numerical simulation on the stent by finite element analysis (FEA) to explain the relationship between stent injury, vascular injury, and stent deployment temperature. A physical model derived from micro-morphologies on the degradation mechanism of PLA was also proposed. These results may provide new insights for the examination of the degradation behavior of 4D printed stents and minimize medical risk.