Department of Mechanical Engineering, Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland.
Int J Numer Method Biomed Eng. 2013 Nov;29(11):1161-75. doi: 10.1002/cnm.2557. Epub 2013 May 20.
Today, the majority of coronary stents are balloon-expandable and are deployed using a balloon-tipped catheter. To improve deliverability, the membrane of the angioplasty balloon is typically folded about the catheter in a pleated configuration. As such, the deployment of the angioplasty balloon is governed by the material properties of the balloon membrane, its folded configuration and its attachment to the catheter. Despite this observation, however, an optimum strategy for modelling the configuration of the angioplasty balloon in finite element studies of coronary stent deployment has not been identified, and idealised models of the angioplasty balloon are commonly employed in the literature. These idealised models often neglect complex geometrical features, such as the folded configuration of the balloon membrane and its attachment to the catheter, which may have a significant influence on the deployment of a stent. In this study, three increasingly sophisticated models of a typical semi-compliant angioplasty balloon were employed to determine the influence of angioplasty balloon configuration on the deployment of a stent. The results of this study indicate that angioplasty balloon configuration has a significant influence on both the transient behaviour of the stent and its impact on the mechanical environment of the coronary artery.
如今，大多数冠状动脉支架都是球囊扩张式的，通过带有球囊尖端的导管进行部署。为了提高可输送性，通常将血管成形球囊的膜折叠在导管上，形成褶皱结构。因此，血管成形球囊的部署受球囊膜的材料特性、折叠结构及其与导管的连接方式的影响。尽管如此，在冠状动脉支架部署的有限元研究中，尚未确定用于模拟血管成形球囊形状的最佳策略，并且在文献中通常采用理想化的血管成形球囊模型。这些理想化模型通常忽略了复杂的几何特征，例如球囊膜的折叠结构及其与导管的连接方式，这些特征可能会对支架的部署产生重大影响。在这项研究中，使用了三个越来越复杂的典型半顺应性血管成形球囊模型，以确定血管成形球囊形状对支架部署的影响。研究结果表明，血管成形球囊形状对支架的瞬态行为及其对冠状动脉机械环境的影响都有重大影响。
