Mechanical properties and biological evaluation of buffalo horn material were examined in this study. The effects of sampling position of buffalo horn on mechanical properties were investigated with uniaxial tension and micron indentation tests. Meanwhile, the variation of element contents in different parts of buffalo horn was determined with elemental analysis, and the microstructure of the horn was measured with scanning electron microscopy. In addition, biological evaluation of buffalo horn was studied with hemolytic test, erythrocyte morphology, platelet and erythrocyte count, and implantation into mouse. Results showed that the buffalo horn had good mechanical properties and mechanical characteristic values of it gradually increased along with the growth direction of the horn, which may be closely related to its microstructure and element content of C, N, and S in different parts of the buffalo horn. On the other hand, because the buffalo horn does not have toxicity, it therefore does not cause hemolysis of erythrocyte and has a good affinity with it. Buffalo horn has good histocompatibility but meanwhile it may induce the platelet adhesion and aggregation. Even so, it does not continue to rise to induce a large number of platelet to aggregate with resulting blood clotting. Therefore, the buffalo horn material has been proved to possess good blood compatibility according to the preliminary evaluation.
New biodegradable intravascular stent can reduce risk of foreign bodies retained, thus, it is widely concerned and some of the products have been introduced into the clinic. However, the characteristic of biodegradable may lead to more safety concerns associated with thrombosis. To ensure the safety, the thrombus formation experiment in vivo needs to be carefully designed and evaluated based on GB/T 16886.4 standard, but current standard do not provide explicit testing and evaluating methods. Establishing animal model with experimental pigs, the study compares biodegradable coronary stents and metal stents by simulating clinical implantation in vivo on the thrombus formation in the implanting process, and after the short-term and long-term implantation. The evaluation methods include gross observation, digital subtraction angiography intraoperative analysis, optical coherence tomography analysis, scanning electron microscopy and so on. The results show that combining these methods could comprehensively evaluate the whole process of the thrombus formation from the beginning of implantation to the end of preclinical animal experiments, so that, it may better predict the clinical thrombosis risk, and the selection of the control was very important. The study tries to use the comparison examples of thrombosis on the new medical instrument to provide the clue for thrombosis evaluation in vivo on similar instruments and show the methodology on the preclinical evaluation.