A stent is a device that is implanted into your body to open a blood vessel and keep it open.
Commonly, we hear about cardiac stents. A stent is a metal device that keeps open a cardiac blood vessel to allow the heart to get the necessary blood in order to function. There many different types of stents including drug-eluting stents. These give off certain types of medication that prevent the rejection of this metal device from within the artery or vein.
Stents can be used in other parts of the body, but they have the same function; to keep open a vessel that is closing.
In a cardiac case, a patient may be having chest pain. After an angiogram, which is a test designed to determine if there are blockages in the coronary arteries, a decision may be made to insert a stent into the coronary artery before proceeding to open-heart surgery and having the patient undergo cardiac bypass surgery.
Once they stent is inserted, it will stay in place because of a process known as epithelialization. that is the process by which the epithelial skin tissue grows over the stent and literally holds it in place.
To learn how a misread EKG resulted in a massive heart attack for this patient, I encourage you to watch the quick video below...
