Coronary stents: 30 years of medical progress

The history of interventional cardiology has been marked by several technologic revolutions since the late 1970s. The first key step was the use of inflatable balloon angioplasty as an alternative to CABG surgery for coronary revascularization, followed by intracoronary delivery of bare metal stent (BMS) and drug eluting stents (DES) to drastically reduce intracoronary restenosis observed with BMS. Improved stents platforms and polymers (absorbable or biocompatible) led to a dramatic reduction in the rate of late stent thrombosis. Self-expanding stents are now available to improve stent aposition especially in acute myocardial infarction. The emergence of new fully bioabsorbable stents that can be combined with antiproliferative drugs is the ongoing revolution. A new generation of stents is continuously improving and likely to become the ideal stent for coronary revascularization in the near future.