Cardiovascular stents are one of the most widely implanted medical devices, with over 1 million implanted each year in the United States alone. While stent failure modes of restenosis and thrombosis have been widely examined, there is an increasing appreciation of the propensity for stents to fracture and break after implantation. It remains unclear however what causes these fractures, which patients and devices are most susceptible, and whether fracture results in failure of device function.
