Heart valve replacement material

The use of synthetic polymers in medicine and biotechnology is a subject of wide interest. Polymers are used in replacement blood vessels, heart valves, blood pumps, dialysis membranes, intraocular lenses, tissue regeneration platforms, surgical sutures, and in a variety of targeted, controlled drug delivery devices. Poly(organosiloxanes) have been used for many years as inert prostheses and heart valves. Biomedical materials based on polyphosphazenes are being considered for nearly all the uses mentioned above. 

Kidane, A.G., Burriesd, G., Cornejo, P., Dooley, A., Sarkar, S., Bonhoeffer, P., Edirisinghe, M., Seifalian, A.M., 2009a. Current developments and future prospects for heart valve replacement therapy. Journal of Biomedical Materials Research Part B Applied Biomaterials 88,290-303. 

There is a great need for strong materials such as alloys that can snap back into shape. Medical applications include prostheses— artificial limbs—and implanted devices such as heart valves. Most biological substances are smart, and the ability to replace lost or injured tissues and organs with smart materials would be a tremendous medical advance. 

Biomaterials are materials foreign to the human body that are used in medicine to replace, support or restore body function. Applications range from central venous and urinary catheters to more complex devices such as prosthetic joints and heart valves. The risk of biomaterial centered infection (BCI) is a key factor limiting their use [1]. The incidence of this type of infections varies for each application for instance 4% for hip prostheses [2] and 10-20% for urinary catheters (see Table 1). In BCI microorganisms are present in close association with the biomaterial surface forming a so-called biofilm. Different species of microorganisms are found in BCI that are often commen-... 

The application of polymeric materials in medicine is a fairly specialized area with a wide range of specific applications and requirements. Although the total volume of polymers used in this application may be small compared to the annual production of polyethylene, for example, the total amount of money spent annually on prosthetic and biomedical devices exceeds 16 billion in the United States alone. These applications include over a million dentures, nearly a half billion dental fillings, about six million contact lenses, over a million replacement joints (hip, knee, finger, etc.), about a half million plastic surgery operations (breast prosthesis, facial reconstruction, etc.), over 25,000 heart valves, and 60,000 pacemaker implantations. In addition, over AO,000 patients are on hemodialysis units (artificial kidney) on a regular basis, and over 90,000 coronary bypass operations (often using synthetic polymers) are performed each year (]J. 

The carbon support films used in the previous studies were similar, if not identical to LTI carbon (36), a material well tolerated by the circulation and used to coat prosthetic heart valves. These carbon substrates were replaced with other materials in... 

BC suspension obtained from an agitation culture system was mixed with PVA powder to fabricate PVA-BC composite by considering PVA as a matrix and BC as a reinforcement material. The composite was proposed for cardiovascular soft tissue replacement application [78], The composite could be adjusted its mechanical properties to get close to those of specific tissue [aorta and heart valve] by changing the composition of the composite and the processing parameters. 

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