Study of drug-eluting coating on metal coronary stent

Drug-eluting stent has been proved to decrease the restenosis caused by the stent implantation, owing to the existence of a drug-eluting coating on the stent. For ensuring the effectivity and security of the drug-eluting stent during the service period, the uniform surface, good deformation and stabilized drug release behavior of the stents should be satisfied. In this study, the performances mentioned were studied on stainless steel stents. The results showed that the surface morphology of the coating was affected by the sorts of solvent, the parameters of the spraying process and the addition of the plasticizer. The drug-eluting profile of the coating was influenced by the plasticizer content and PLGA/drug ratio of the coating. Meanwhile, the plasticizer as an additional agent obviously increased the deformation performance of the coating. Optimized parameters for preparation of the drug-eluting coating were investigated to obtain a drug-eluting coating with good integrated performances. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.