New advances on tracheal stent manufacturing

Several complications, including tumors, can cause the obstruction of the trachea. To prevent from suffocation, tubular implants named stents are used. Commercially available stents are expensive and not anatomically adapted, and therefore big challenges need to be faced in order to improve them. This work presents several additive manufacturing methodologies to fabricate customized tracheal stents. Rapid tooling seems to be the best option. Two different molds were manufactured using open-source low-cost machines in order to reduce costs. In addition, a high speed machine was also used to fabricate another mold. The molds produced were poured either with a non-implantable medical grade platinum silicone or with an implantable medical grade liquid silicone rubber in order to obtain the final tailored tracheal stents. Finally, a mechanical behavioral test was performed with implantable medical grade liquid silicone rubber stents. The results showed an adequate Young Modulus suitable to favor the insertion and extraction of the stent from the human trachea. Future work is needed to fully study the tracheal stents manufacturing process and be able to introduce several important steps, such as the sterilization of the product and the certification of the entire process.