Biomaterials for Ureteral Stents: Advances and Future Perspectives

Abstract Ureteral stents play a fundamental role in the relief of several symptoms associated with common urinary diseases in the modern society, such as strictures, obstruction or promotion of ureteral healing. Even though ureteral stents have been used for more than 40 years and their performance had a huge development over time, they are still related with complications that include stent encrustation and urinary tract infections. Therefore, efforts from the research community still continue to better meet the clinical needs. Ureteral stent’s materials have a great influence on their efficacy, mostly in terms of mechanical and physicochemical properties. Thus, understanding the stent material’s properties is fundamental to address problems of encrustation, bacterial adhesion, patient discomfort and the troubles during insertion, by working on the softness, flexibility and surface properties of the device. Considerable progress has been done on ureteral stent’s properties with the aim to meet the clinical problems encountered. Even though this progress does not end up with an ureteral stent without associated complications, it allows to understand the behaviour of different materials and designs in the urologic environment. Indeed, the vast amount of work done and respective outputs have been proven that the different materials can complement each other’s disadvantages, for example, the metals can bear with the high compression that polymeric stents cannot. The goal is to combine the advantages of each material without their associated complications. Therefore, the use of biodegradable materials and combination of different raw materials, together with design adjustments appears to be the future of ureteral stents design.