Bacterial medical implant materials

Despite the sophistication of today s medical devices, the materials used often result in undesirable complications, including bacterial infections, blood clots, tissue trauma due to device insertion, and friction and wear of implants. This is especially true for such devices as catheters, guidewires, stents, probes, and prosthetic implants. 

Infection Is an Important concern for the medical device Industry. While the exact causes of Infection remain unclear there appears to be an association of Implanted biomedical devices with an enhanced Ukellhood for Infection [1,2]. The pathway for such Infections Is complicated and depends on numerous factors Including the material used In the device, as well as the device location and expected Implantation time [3]. For example a catheter associated with balloon angioplasty may be In place for minutes while a total joint replacement device may be expected to function In-vivo for two decades or more. Some materials appear to be more sensitive to bacterial contamination because of their composition, microstructure, degree of porosity, or surface chemistry of the material Itself [4,5]. 

Looking at the huge number of successes in the reduction and prevention of bacterial adhesion and biofilm formation in vitro (Baneijee et al., 2011 Campoccia et al., 2013 Carvalho et al., 2013 Epstein et al., 2012 Swartjes et al., 2013, 2014a,b Wong et al., 2011) and comparing them to the few concepts that have successfully been applied in clinical situations, the complexity of the problems associated with bacterial adhesion and biofilm formation becomes evident. This is partially attributable to the complexity of medical devices and implants, which all create interfaces between materials and biology. 

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