Laser-cut stent

Abstract

A stent 100 comprising a tubular body defined by a longitudinal succession of annular crowns 102 each comprising struts 108 disposed in a circumferentially extending waveform. Sets of connectors 118 interconnect successive crowns by bridging respective gaps 104 between the successive crowns, those sets comprising sets of long connectors 118’ and sets of short connectors 118’’ that effect, respectively, trough-to-trough 110’’ and peak-to-peak 110’ connections between the waveforms of the successive crowns. The stent comprises a first end portion 112, a central portion 116, and a second end portion 114 in longitudinal succession, each of the end portions 112, 114 comprising, respectively, an outermost ultimate crown (126, Fig 6), a penultimate crown (128, Fig 6), and an antepenultimate crown (130, Fig 6) in longitudinally inward succession. In each of the end portions, the set of connectors disposed between the ultimate and penultimate crowns contains more connectors than the set of connectors disposed between the penultimate and antepenultimate crowns (Fig 6).

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