Historical overview on the development and characteristics of stents and future outlooks.

The history and development of endovascular stents is described beginning with the Maass double helix spiral prosthesis, the first stent used in human clinical trials in the early 80s. This is followed by a description of the three main groups of stent techniques: the shape memory alloy stents, the balloon-expandable stents, and the self-expanding stainless steel stents. Requirements and new trends for improving clinical results in the future complete this text.