Part 2 in the history of percutaneous coronary interventions: Ulrich Sigwart's essential contribution to intracoronary stenting, Professor and Chairman of Cardiology, University Hospital Geneva, Switzerland 2002-2006.

摘要

Although Jacques Puel takes credit for implanting the first-ever coronary stent on 28th March 1986 in Toulouse, the contribution of Ulrich Sigwart as a pioneer in this field is at least as great. He persisted, in spite of many sceptical voices, setbacks, and pitfalls experimentally and in the clinic, to improve and simplify the procedure of inserting, localizing, and fixing the stent into the arterial wall. Together with industry, he improved the design of these metallic devices. The most important steps were, however, to more selectively inhibit the discovered platelet adhesion and accumulation on the surface of the stents. Inhibiting the final common pathway of these platelet functions by glyco-protein llb/llla inhibitors now allows stents to be safely inserted, even in unstable lesions. The ease of insertion and the almost always perfect angiographic appearance of stented vessels led in the late 1990s to an excess of stent implantations, the so-called 'stentomania'.