Globally >237 million people suffer from peripheral artery disease (PAD), an abnormal narrowing of the arteries. The implantation of stents is the first-line therapy for PAD with ~3.5M stents implanted every year. Critically, restenosis – the gradual reclogging of the blood vessel occurs in 23% of all cases after 6 years of stent implantation and is often detected when it is too late owing to costly (>€50M /p.a in western Europe, 2020) and infrequent monitoring (shortage of specialised medical personnel) of stent implants. It is a major problem even with modern stents leading to limb amputation (due to critical limb ischemia) and death.

VesselSens is developing a smart therapeutic monitoring device, StentGuard, for rapid, reliable, low cost and early diagnosis of restenosis non-invasively. StentGuard allows frequent stent monitoring at low cost by non-specialist medical practitioners. The relevant data is stored and accessed via the cloud-based server. This solves the clinical challenge of infrequent monitoring and facilitates early diagnosis of restenosis.