OBJECTIVES To investigate the safety and efficacy of durable polymer drug eluting stents (DES) and biodegradable polymer biolimus eluting stents (biolimus-ES). DESIGN Network meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. DATA SOURCES AND STUDY SELECTION Medline, Google Scholar, Embase, and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) database search for randomised controlled tr...

BACKGROUND The biodegradable polymer drug-eluting stents (DES) were developed to improve vascular healing. However, further data and longer-term follow-up are needed to confirm safety and efficacy of these stents. This randomized clinical trial aimed to compare safety and efficacy of 2 sirolimus-eluting stents (SES): Cordimax-a novel abluminal biodegradable polymer SES and Cypher Select-a durab...

INTRODUCTION Drug-eluting stents (DES) have significantly decreased the need for repeat coronary revascularization but concerns remain regarding the safety of first and second generation DES. We compared the safety and efficacy of a biolimus-eluting stent (with biodegradable polymer) with an everolimus-eluting stent (with durable polymer) one. METHODS We performed a randomized trial to compar...

Biodegradable polymers have been widely used as scaffolding materials to regenerate new tissues. To mimic natural extracellular matrix architecture, a novel highly porous structure, which is a three-dimensional interconnected fibrous network with a fiber diameter ranging from 50 to 500 nm, has been created from biodegradable aliphatic polyesters in this work. A porosity as high as 98.5% has bee...

BACKGROUND Whether the rate of drug elution and polymer absorption affects clinical outcomes of biodegradable polymer-based drug-eluting stents (DES) is unknown. The widely used polylactide polymer-based Excel stent (JW Medical, Weihai, China) elutes sirolimus within 180 days, and the polylactide polymer is completely absorbed within 6 to 9 months. In contrast, the poly-lactide-co-glycolide pol...

Polycondensation and ring-opening polymerization are two important polymer synthesis methods. Poly(lactic acid), the most typical biodegradable polymer, has been researched extensively from 1900s. It is of significant importance to have an up-to-date review on the recent improvement in techniques for biodegradable polymers. This review takes poly(lactic acid) as the example to present newly dev...

Non-biodegradable polymers are released as microplastics into the environments during biodegradation of partially biodegradable polymer blends.