Stent and Artery Geometry Determine Intimal Thickening Independent of Arterial Injury

Clinical trials show that larger immediate postdeployment stent diameters provide greater ultimate luminal size, whereas animal data show that arterial injury and stent design determine late neointimal thickening. At deployment, a stent stretches a vessel, imposing a cross-sectional polygonal luminal shape that depends on the stent design, with each strut serving as a vertex. We asked whether this design-dependent postdeployment luminal geometry affects late neointimal thickening independently of the extent of strut-induced injury.