Which patients could benefit the most from bioresorbable vascular scaffold implant: From clinical trials to clinical practice

Bioresorbable scaffold technology has evolved over the last few years with a number of devices either available or under clinical and preclinical investigation. The absence of a permanent metallic segment in the treated vessel wall has the potential of addressing some of the issues still encountered with metallic drug-eluting stents (DES) despite improvements in stent platform, polymer and drug elution. To date however, the use of bioresorbable vascular scaffolds (BVS) has largely been restricted to patients recruited into clinical trials with a relatively small number of "real-world" patients treated with these devices. Here we explore the issue of BVS use in "real-world" patients and try to identify, on the basis of our experience, the subset of patients that could benefit the most.