a three-dimensional mathematical model for drug delivery from drug-eluting stents

Current drug-eluting stent (des) technology is not optimized withregard to the pharmacokinetics of drug release, more research on thedrug-eluting stent design and flux of drug release to the arterial wallis necessary. considering a three-dimensional (3d) cylindricalmathematical model, a novel free drug mass transfer release hasbeen formulated and applied for better estimation of the drugconcentration in the tissue. the transport equations involved bothconvection and diffusion equations. besides, a reversible reaction inthe arterial wall was considered. the present model was solved by anappropriate numerical simulation method and the predicted resultswere compared with in vivo data. to find out the rate-limiting step,the time scale analysis was also applied. the obtained results showedthat the binding process is more limited by convection and diffusion,where convection is the rate-controlling step. it is also demonstratedthat the presented approach has advantages over the prior free drugmass transfer models, including better data prediction and satisfyingmass transfer consistency.