Question 1: A stent is a device that is implanted into an occluded artery to permit increased blood flow. A permanent, yet flexible, device is needed for use as a

vascular stent. What material meets that need? In addition to information contained in this chapter, search the web for information on current materials selections using keywords such as "stents" and "metals." The National Institutes of Health PUBMED website catalogs scientific publications within the biological, biomedical, and medical sciences(www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez e). Corporate web pages can provide additional information. Guidant and Boston Scientific are two companies that currently produce coronary stents. The United States Patent and Trademark Office provides another very useful web page for researching uses of materials in surgical and medical devices (www.uspto.gov ).