The first stents created were bare-metal stents where they were made from stainless steel and had poor flexibility. Despite its reduced rates of restenosis compared to plain old balloon angioplasty, it still had high rates of stent thrombosis and required a high dosage of blood thinners. This led to the development of drug-eluting stents to act as local drug delivery and vascular scaffold platform to reduce in-stent restenosis.
