Diamonds are now a cardiac patient’s best friend (US 2003/69632). After a heart attack, surgeons can insert a stent – a short tube of metal scaffolding – into an artery to keep it open. But proteins in the blood soon stick to the stent’s surface and narrow the flow.
Four Belgian inventors, Ivan De Scheerder, Eddy Demeyere, Dominique Neerinck and Wilfred Coppens say the answer is to deposit a smooth, tight coating of diamond-like material on the surface by exposing it to hot carbon plasma in a vacuum chamber. Tests on pigs show the stents clog far less than uncoated versions.…
