Medical textiles body implants

High performance implantable textiles include implants, grafts, sutures, prosthetics and medical devices. The human body is an extremely well-designed and constructed structure, surpassing any machine that man has thus far been able to make. Its complex system and organisation is governed by an... 

This section focuses on prominent medical applications where 3D textile strucmre has been applied, that is, bandages and composite dressings for wound management and supportive structures for tissue engineering and body implants. 

After a brief introduction to the human body, the book gives an overview of medical textile products and the processes used to manufacture them. Subsequent chapters cover superabsorbent textiles, functional wound dressings, bandages, sutures, implants, and other important medical textile technologies in detail. Biocompatibility testing and regulatory control are then addressed, and the book finishes with a review of research and development strategy for medical textile products. 

However, not only the choice of material has to be considered for medical implants. Also the architecture of the textile structure plays a crucial role not only determining mechanical properties and how successful the implant is from a mechanical, load-bearing point of view but also the durability and long-term properties acting as a replacement tissue and successfully fulfilling the physiological function in the body. 

The health care industry is capitalizing on new medical technologies based on loT that will both dramatically improve care and lower costs. There is a dramatic growth in medical devices that use wireless technologies, some implanted and some worn on the body, to control bodily functions and to measure an array of physiological parameters. For example, implanted devices with biosensors and actuators can control heart rhythms, monitor hypertension, provide functional electrical stimulation of nerves, operate as glaucoma sensors, and monitor bladder and cranial pressure [3]. Electronic textiles (E-Tex)-based WBSNs for noninvasive health care monitoring will be the most... 

In this context, textiles and fibrous structures are being brought to play an essential role in the efficiency of implantable medical devices. Textiles are already used in many medical devices such as gowns, wound dressings, face masks, stockings, etc. Discontinuity, directionality, and multiscale levels are some of the fibrous structure fundamentals that lead to obvious wearability features and ability to conform to the body with softness and comfort. In an intracoiporeal use, three other resulting key points of these fundamentals are valuable. 

In this chapter we have chosen not to focus on specific examples of smart textiles application in order to avoid narrowing the field of smart implantable fibrous medical devices to a few innovative textile properties. Contrariwise, fiber characteristics are pointed out to show that all of them, in a prospective designing approach, could achieve smart features in the implantable device area. However, we are limited in exploratory areas using new materials because a decline is needed to be certain that a material is accepted by the body. Given the diversity of appreciation of smart appearance, as well as the implantable medical device aspect, we have focused on the biocompatibility and biointegration of substitutes in their environment. This theme therefore needs to be complemented by other approaches such as the concepts of smart attitude and implantable device as related in Fig. 13.1. 

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