The introduction of coronary stents represents a major advance in interventional cardiology. Intimal hyperplasia and subsequent restenosis remains limitation of bare metal stents.
First-generation of drug-eluting stents demonstrated significant improvements in efficacy, but not necessarily safety. Development of next generations drug-eluting stents and bioresorbable scaffolds have focussed on optimizing both features.
This review summarizes present technology with particular emphasis on possible complications of stent implantation.