GUIDING THE SETUP OF CLINICALLY MEANINGFUL TEST METHODS USING COMPUTATIONAL MODELING

摘要

Contemporary drug eluting stents (DES) are designed and tested such that they will endure under in vivo fatigue loading after implantation. However, DES fractures have occasionally been reported in the literature and are often associated with restenosis and/or thrombosis events long after DES deployment. This observation indicates a need for fatigue test methods which appropriately compare the fatigue resistance of various DES platforms at loading levels beyond clinical relevance. The setup of this type of fatigue test involves applying repetitive displacement-overload or force-overload conditions to compare fatigue resistance under aggressive yet clinically meaningful loading. In the present work, these two overloading philosophies are compared using finite element analysis (FEA) with the aim of selecting a loading approach that is capable of appropriately evaluating the bending fatigue resistance of stent platforms with varying stiffness attributes.