A single-step stent delivery, deployment, and expansion system.

Abstract

Placement of intracoronary stents now comprises a significant number of the percutaneous coronary revascularization procedures being performed in high-volume interventional laboratories in the United States. Stents have become popular because of the reliable acute results, and decreased restenosis. The most common stent currently in use in the United States is the Palmaz-Schatz balloon-expandable stent (PS stent). This stent delivery system (SDS) usually requires predilatation with a balloon and another dilatation, after stent deployment, with a high-pressure balloon in order to adequately expand the stent. We report on a new hybrid stent-delivery system using the PS stent, the sheath from the SDS, and an NC Bandit balloon. This new hybrid system is safe and significantly decreases the procedure time, fluoroscopy time, and need for additional stents due to angiographic dissection resulting from inexact positioning of the high-pressure balloon within the initially deployed stent, and/due to inadequate placement of the first stent. This may be an ideal delivery system for single stent deployment using currently approved FDA equipment.