The first clinical experience with AMS was in infrapopliteal arteries and demonstrated safety and acceptable patency rates up to 12 months post implantation. These encouraging results led to the initiation of the first trial to treat human coronary lesions with AMS named Clinical Performance and angiographic Results of Coronary Stenting with Absorbable Metal Stents (PROGRESS AMS-1). Although an ischemic driven target lesion revascularization rate of 26.7% (16/60) was observed during the PROGRESS AMS-1 study, it demonstrated that biodegradable magnesium stents can be implanted safely in coronary arteries, and the stents degraded as intended without causing stent thrombosis, myocardial infarction or death at one year. No adverse device effects from the absorbable nature of the stents or its constituents were detected. The continued clinical follow-up and retrospective evaluation of all angiographies and IVUS films on all eligible patients enrolled in the PROGRESS-AMS 1.0 will give important information on the long term safety of absorbable metal scaffolds and thus can support improvement of the device.
