Healthcare and hygiene products

Healthcare and hygiene products are an important sector in the field of medicine and surgery. The range of products available is vast but typically they are used either in the operating theatre or on the hospital ward for the hygiene, care and safety of staff, and patients. Table 5.6 illustrates the range of products used in this category and includes the fibres and/or materials used and the method of manufacture. 

Infection control is challenging and represents a considerable healthcare burden. With the arrival of high risk multiresistant pathogenic bacteria, healthcare-associated infections are a serious problem, especially in the hospital environment. An expert committee appointed by the UK government predicted recently that 

Product application Fibre type Manufacture system 

Surgical hosiery Polyamide, polyester, cotton, elastomeric yams Knitted 

Textile materials used in the operating theatre include surgeons gowns, caps and masks, patient drapes, and cover cloths of various sizes (Fig. 5.7). It is essential that the environment of the operating theatre is clean and a strict control of infection is maintained. A possible source of infection to the patient is the pollutant particles shed by the nursing staff, which carry bacteria. Surgical gowns should act as a barrier to 

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A similar overview was published by the author in 2006, in which a number of crucial issues regarding medical products in goieral and healthcare and hygiene products in particular were identified and debated amongst clinicians, environmentalists, drug companies etc (1). This overview presents an update of the issues discussed in the above paper and it is recommended that both overviews should be studied together. 

S C Anand, Healthcare and Hygiene Products An Overview, Medical Textiles and Biomaterials for Healthcare, Cambridge UK, Woodhead Publishing Ltd, 2006, pj e 77. 

Medical textiles embrace all those textile materials used for medical devices in health and hygiene plications in both the consumer and medical markets, thus comprising a group of products with considerable variations in terms of product performance and unit value. Categories of medical textiles include non-implantable materials, implantable materials, healthcare and hygiene products, and extracorporeal devices. The application of different fibres for fabricating medical textiles for medical devices is illustrated in Tables 1-3, which focus on non-implantables, implantables, and healthcare/hygiene, respectively. 

Desia A A (2003), Special textiles used for manufacturing healthcare and hygiene products . Textile Magazine, 44(5), 73-79. 

Viscose fibres are man-made fibres from natural ceUulosic resources they are thus biodegradable and have the same health and safety properties as natural ceUulosic properties, and are widely used in food, medical, healthcare, and hygiene products. In contrast to many synthetic fibres made from thermoplastic polymers, one advantage... 

Healthcare and hygiene products such as bedding, clothing, operating room garments, wipes,... 

Medical textile products can be divided into four groups depending upon the usage healthcare and hygiene products, extracorporeal devices, implantable materials, and nonimplantable materials. 

The healthcare and hygiene sector is important for medical textile products. Vast numbers of healthcare and hygiene products are typically used either in the operating theater or in hospital wards for the hygiene, care, and safety of staff and patients. They can be washable or disposable. 

Superabsorbent fibers are widely used in healthcare and hygiene products. These fibers can absorb up to 50 times their mass in water, whereas conventional wood-pulp and cotton Unter absorbents absorb approximately six times their mass in water. These superabsorbent fibers are also advantageous compared to superabsorbent powders in that, due to their small diameter (=30 pm) and high surface areas, they typically absorb 95% of the ultimate capacity within 15 s. 

Table 2.2 shows some examples of healthcare and hygiene products. 

SAPs can also be divided into synthetic and natural types, with the latter being further divided into two main groups those based on polysaccharides and those based on polypeptides. Natural SAPs are usually prepared by the addition of some synthetic parts to the original substrates, for example, graft copolymerization of vinyl monomers on polysaccharides. Because of their low price and high performance, synthetic SAPs are widely used in many healthcare and hygiene products, and the term superabsorbent polymers usually implies the most conventional type of SAP, that is, an anionic copolymeric network based on partially neutralized AA or acrylamide. 

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