Soft stent with excellent follow-up capability to blood vessel

Abstract

To provide a lumen-friendly, flexible stent which is excellent in trackability to lumens (thus, it is able to pass through the three-dimensionally meandering lumens), substantially free from shortening (shortening of the length), uniformly expandable. A stent according to the present invention comprises radially expandable annular members (1) which are aligned in a longitudinal direction of the stent, and one or more coupling elements (2) that couple adjoining two annular members (1) in the longitudinal direction of the stent, wherein said annular member comprises first annular member elements (11) and second annular member elements (12), which have a plane symmetrical pattern and are alternately connected in the circumferential direction of the annular member, and wherein under the condition that the stent is unfolded onto a plane, the first annular member element (11) includes one wave mountain, while the second annular member element (12) includes one wave trough, the adjoining two annular members being connected between the junctions which connect the first annular member elements (11) and second annular member elements (12) of the respective annular members.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.