Balloon Expandable stents are described as being which of the following?

• A. Stainless steel, covered, drug eluting and biodegradable
• B. Only stainless steel
• C. Plastic polymer only
• D. Metallic nitinol only

Answer: (A)

Balloon-expandable stents are a versatile platform that can be built from different materials and finished with various coatings. They have historically used stainless steel as the base metal, but modern designs may also be cobalt-chromium or other alloys; the key is that the expansion is achieved by a balloon, not by a memory alloy. They can be covered with a biocompatible membrane for sealing or exclusion of flow in certain lesions, and many are drug-eluting, using a polymer coating to release antiproliferative drugs to reduce restenosis. There are also biodegradable (bioabsorbable) variants where either the scaffold or the coating degrades over time. Nitinol stents are typically self-expanding, not balloon-expandable, so describing balloon-expandable stents as exclusively nitinol would be inaccurate. Therefore, saying they can be stainless steel, covered, drug-eluting and biodegradable captures the broad range of possibilities.