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Development and evaluation of the manufacture of a coronary stent for the South African market

The need for economic treatment of coronary heart disease in South Africa and the popularity of coronary stent implantation as an effective treatment increases. Stent implants have had to be imported to date with significant cost involved. The project in hand therefore deals with the evaluation of t...

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Main Author: Lehmann, Markus
Format: Thesis
Language:English
Published: Division of Biomedical Engineering 2017
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access_status_str Open Access
author Lehmann, Markus
author_browse Lehmann, Markus
author_facet Lehmann, Markus
author_sort Lehmann, Markus
collection Thesis
description The need for economic treatment of coronary heart disease in South Africa and the popularity of coronary stent implantation as an effective treatment increases. Stent implants have had to be imported to date with significant cost involved. The project in hand therefore deals with the evaluation of the possibilities of economical local manufacture of a coronary stent. The design of several coronary stents currently in use was carefully analysed and the results of clinical application described in the literature were reviewed. After evaluating the patent situation, a suitable design concept was chosen, based primarily on the availability of manufacturing equipment. The design concept of choice is the balloon expandable slotted tube variety. Stents of this most popular slotted tube design are usually laser cut out of a tube with good results. Since there was no suitable laser cutting equipment in use in South Africa, it was undertaken to manufacture stent prototypes by spark erosion to establish the general suitability of the method for stent manufacturing. The initial design was adjusted several times to the manufacturing process and suitable machine parameters were evaluated. For comparison a stent of a similar design was laser cut by an established European manufacturer. The geometry of the most favourable prototypes was analysed by computer simulation using finite element analysis, followed by simple physical tests of deployment and radial strength. The quality of manufacturing was evaluated with electron microscopy. The computational and mechanical test results of the design analysis yielded largely satisfactory results, but it was found that the manufacturing process of spark erosion is not suitable to manufacture products that would have to compete on the current sophisticated market. With the spark erosion equipment, neither a satisfying surface quality nor acceptable geometrical tolerances could be achieved. This was particularly obvious after comparison with the laser cut stent sample of the same design. An improvement in quality of the spark erosion process would require extensive fine-tuning and would increase the already very long manufacturing time and the cost significantly. Subcontracted laser cutting in Europe was found to be more reliable and economical.
format Thesis
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institution University of Cape Town (South Africa)
language eng
last_indexed 2026-06-10T12:32:34.479Z
license_str Not specified — see source repository
provenance_str_mv Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
publishDate 2017
publishDateRange 2017
publishDateSort 2017
publisher Division of Biomedical Engineering
publisherStr Division of Biomedical Engineering
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source_str UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
spelling oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/26517 Development and evaluation of the manufacture of a coronary stent for the South African market Lehmann, Markus Biomedical Engineering The need for economic treatment of coronary heart disease in South Africa and the popularity of coronary stent implantation as an effective treatment increases. Stent implants have had to be imported to date with significant cost involved. The project in hand therefore deals with the evaluation of the possibilities of economical local manufacture of a coronary stent. The design of several coronary stents currently in use was carefully analysed and the results of clinical application described in the literature were reviewed. After evaluating the patent situation, a suitable design concept was chosen, based primarily on the availability of manufacturing equipment. The design concept of choice is the balloon expandable slotted tube variety. Stents of this most popular slotted tube design are usually laser cut out of a tube with good results. Since there was no suitable laser cutting equipment in use in South Africa, it was undertaken to manufacture stent prototypes by spark erosion to establish the general suitability of the method for stent manufacturing. The initial design was adjusted several times to the manufacturing process and suitable machine parameters were evaluated. For comparison a stent of a similar design was laser cut by an established European manufacturer. The geometry of the most favourable prototypes was analysed by computer simulation using finite element analysis, followed by simple physical tests of deployment and radial strength. The quality of manufacturing was evaluated with electron microscopy. The computational and mechanical test results of the design analysis yielded largely satisfactory results, but it was found that the manufacturing process of spark erosion is not suitable to manufacture products that would have to compete on the current sophisticated market. With the spark erosion equipment, neither a satisfying surface quality nor acceptable geometrical tolerances could be achieved. This was particularly obvious after comparison with the laser cut stent sample of the same design. An improvement in quality of the spark erosion process would require extensive fine-tuning and would increase the already very long manufacturing time and the cost significantly. Subcontracted laser cutting in Europe was found to be more reliable and economical. 2017-12-08T13:56:41Z 2017-12-08T13:56:41Z 2000 Master Thesis Masters MSc (Med) http://hdl.handle.net/11427/26517 eng application/pdf Division of Biomedical Engineering Faculty of Health Sciences University of Cape Town
spellingShingle Biomedical Engineering
Lehmann, Markus
Development and evaluation of the manufacture of a coronary stent for the South African market
thesis_degree_str Master's
title Development and evaluation of the manufacture of a coronary stent for the South African market
title_full Development and evaluation of the manufacture of a coronary stent for the South African market
title_fullStr Development and evaluation of the manufacture of a coronary stent for the South African market
title_full_unstemmed Development and evaluation of the manufacture of a coronary stent for the South African market
title_short Development and evaluation of the manufacture of a coronary stent for the South African market
title_sort development and evaluation of the manufacture of a coronary stent for the south african market
topic Biomedical Engineering
url http://hdl.handle.net/11427/26517
work_keys_str_mv AT lehmannmarkus developmentandevaluationofthemanufactureofacoronarystentforthesouthafricanmarket