Devices and techniques for endovascular surgery: catheters, stents, coated stents, and stented grafts.

Endovascular/minimally invasive surgery has undergone rapid innovation and growth. From crude, stiff, large-bore tubes that were used initially to evaluate vascular structures, some of the new catheters and wires are only a little bigger than the human hair, which permits their passage in vessels previously thought inaccessible. Closed arteries and veins now can be effectively traversed and blood flow restored by the use of balloons and metallic stents to maintain the integrity of the vascular lumen.