Does balloon expansion compared to self-expansion cause more traumatic injury to pericardial leaflets in valved stents?
Crimping and deployment of valved stents causes microscopic traumatic injury to pericardial leaflets, which may be more severe with balloon-expandable compared to self-expandable designs.
OBJECTIVES: No comparison of balloon- or self-expandable valved stents (VSs) regarding tissue injury (if any) has been reported yet. The objective was to evaluate the occurrence and compare the severity of traumatic injury to leaflets from balloon- or self-expandable VSs. METHODS: Twelve homemade VSs were used for this experiment. These three-leaflet bovine pericardial bioprostheses had either a stainless steel (Group A) or a nitinol stent (Group B). After a 30-min period of compression (external diameter of VS reduced to 7 mm), the prostheses were deployed by balloon inflation (Group A) or by unsheathing (Group B). After H P = 0.03]. CONCLUSIONS: Traumatic injury to the pericardial leaflets does occur during crimping and deployment of balloon- or self-expandable VSs. Injury may be more severe with the balloon-expandable VSs. The impact of such an injury on prosthesis durability requires a further investigation.
Amahzoune et al. (Mon,) studied this question.