This is a consensus document from the European Bifurcation Club concerning bench testing in coronary artery bifurcations. It is
intended to provide guidelines for bench assessment of stents and other
strategies in coronary bifurcation treatment where the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or
International Organization for Standardization (ISO) guidelines are
limited or absent. These recommendations provide guidelines rather than a
step-by-step manual. We provide data on the anatomy of bifurcations and
elastic response of coronary arteries to aid model construction. We
discuss testing apparatus, bench testing endpoints and bifurcation nomenclature.