Biomedical Polymers An Overview

Polymers used as biomaterials can be natural, synthetic or hybrid. With the growing field of regenerative medicine and medical devices, polymers dominate the soft tissue engineering and drug delivery industry and are gradually replacing metals and ceramics in the hard tissue engineering field as well. 

Damodaran et ah, Biomedical Polymers, SpringerBriefs in Applied Sciences and Technology, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-32053-3 l 

1st Level material properties Chemical/biological characteristics Chemical composition (bulk and surface) Physical characteristics Density Mechanical/stiuctural characteristics Elastic modulus Poisson s ratio Yield strength Tensile strength Compessive strength 

2nd Level material properties Adhesion Surface topology (texture and roughness) Hardness Shear modulus Shear strength Flexural modulus Flexural strength 

Processing and fabrication Reproducibility, quality, sterilizability, packaging, secondary processability  

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Biomedical Polymers An Overview Chitosan conlrol 5% nHA in chitosan 10% nHA in chitosan 20% nHA in chitosan... 

Scholz, C. Poly(y -hydroxyaIkanoates) as potential biomedical materials an overview. In Scholz, C., Gross, R.A. (eds.) Polymers from renewable lesources-biopolymers and biocatalysis, ACS series, vol. 764, pp. 328-334 (2000)... 

Vert, M., 2001, Biopolymers and Artificial Biopolymers in Biomedical Applications, an Overview. In Biorelated Polymers, Sustainable Polymer Science and Technology (E. Chiellini, H. Gil, G. Braunegg, J. Buchert, P. Gatenholm, and M. Van der Zee, eds.), Kluwer Academic/PIenum Publishers, pp. 63-79. 

Kim, Y. H. 2002. An overview on biodegradable polymers in biomedical application. In ICS-UNIDO Edp EGM, Trieste, Italy. 

This contribution will provide a review of polylectrolytes as biomaterials, with emphasis on recent developments. The first section will provide an overview of methods of synthesizing polyelectrolytes in the structures that are most commonly employed for biomedical applications linear polymers, crosslinked networks, and polymer grafts. In the remaining sections, the salient features of polyelectrolyte thermodynamics and the applications of polyelectrolytes for dental adhesives and restoratives, controlled release devices, polymeric drugs, prodrugs, or adjuvants, and biocompatibilizers will be discussed. These topics have been reviewed in the past, therefore previous reviews are cited and only the recent developments are considered here. 

Basically, the book can be subdivided into three parts. In the first part the fundamentals of the instrumentation for infrared and Raman imaging and mapping and an overview on the chemometric tools for image analysis are covered in two introductory chapters. The second part comprises the chapters 3-9 and describes a wide variety of applications ranging from biomedical via food and agriculture to polymers and pharmaceuticals. Some historical insights are given as well. In the third part the chapters 10-15 cover special methodical developments and their utiHty in specific fields. 

Dynamic mechanical techniques have been widely employed in the polymer and related industries however, the applications of such techniques for the characterization of pharmaceutical and certain biomedical systems have not received similar attention. Therefore, in this section, an overview of reported and future applications of these techniques for the characterization of pharmaceutical and biomedical systems is provided. 

Chemical and physical characteristics of the polymeric materials will be critical in determining the performance of the overall system. Therefore, Appendix A includes an overview of the important aspects of the classes of polymers that are most often used in biomedical applications. 

Consequently, the scope of this chapter is to give an overview on the current developments of biomimetic polymers in biomedical applications including an introduction on cell-biomaterial interactions, applied biomimetic strategies, and synthesis and modification techniques for seleaed natural and S3mthetic polymers. Examples of recent studies using... 

In this volume the basic principles of shape-memory polymers and shape-memory polymer composites, as well as the related characterization methods are described. Furthermore, an overview of the application spectrum for SMP is presented, whereby special emphasis is given to biomedical applications. 

Although the focus of this book is on the synthetic degradable polymers, in this chapter, we wiU give an overview of the synthetic as well as natural polymers used for various biomedical applications. The subsequent chapters will discuss in detail the synthesis and processing methodologies of the synthetic polymers. 

Polymers can be classified in various ways. The most obvious is to think of them as either being natural or synthetic. This is the classification used in this book. Alternative ways of classification are based on their use (structural and non-stmctural polymers) and their characteristics (degradable and non-degradable polymers). These aspects are discussed in the first chapter. This chapter will give an overview of the synthetic and natural degradable polymers. However, overall, the book focuses on the synthetic polymers used for biomedical appfications. Amongst the class of synthetic polymers, this chapter will discuss polyesters, polycarbonates, and polyurethanes, the most commonly used synthetics polymers for biomedical appfications. 

We hope that this small book will provide an overview of the use of synthetic polymers in various biomedical applications for a beginner and pave the way for a more detailed study using the resources cited in the book. In closing, we want to thank the New Jersey Center for Biomaterials and Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, for providing the resources to write this chapter and to Dr. Mayra Castro (Springer Applied Science, Germany) for her kind invitation to contribute this manuscript. 

Lyman, D.J. (1983) Polymers in medicine - An overview. Polymers in Medicine. Biomedical an cl Pharmacological Applications. New York, NY, Plenum Press. 215-218. 

This chapter presents an overview of the current knowledge on experimental methods for monitoring the biodegradability of polymeric materials. The focus is, in particular, on the biodegradation of materials imder environmental conditions. Examples of in vivo degradation of polymers used in biomedical applications are not covered in detail, but have been extensively reviewed elsewhere, e.g., [1-3]. Nevertheless, it is important to realise that the degradation of polymers in the human body is also often referred to as biodegradation. 

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