Medical textiles implantable materials

Nanofibers have applications in medicine, artificial organ components, tissue engineering, implant material, drug deliveiy, wound dressing, and medical textile materials. Nanofiber meshes... 

Textile materials are used in a wide variety of applications in healthcare and medicine which include implantable materials for in vivo applications. Vascular grafts, artificial ligaments, artificial blood vessels and mesh gra are typical implantable medical devices. High-tech advances in tissue engineering have enabled researchers to cultivate implantable hiunan organs to the required shape by growing living cells on textile sc olds. 

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. 

For medical products, special thread materials are embroidered onto a substrate according to the form required. If a substrate is chosen that is made of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) or cellulose acetate (CA), it can be dissolved in water or acetone respectively after the embroidery process. The design must ensure that the thread structures hold together securely. Local reinforcements and functional elements can easily be incorporated into the embroidered goods. In an initial phase, the research team with J. G. Ellis has developed embroidered textile implants. They designed hernia patches, implants for intervertebral disc repair and a stent for the repair of abdominal aortic aneurysms (Fig. 12.1). They even used embroidery technology to place and fix rings made of Nitinol shape memory. 

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

Starting from plain cotton-based products, medical textiles have seen rapid development over the last few decades. Nowadays, new biodegradable fibers have enabled the development of novel types of implants, and modem textile machines can produce three-dimensional spacer fabrics that give superior performance over traditional textile materials. These and many other advances have made medical textiles an essential element in modem disease management, and they are becoming more and more important with the increasing number of elderly people in the populations of developed countries. 

As the basic component of medical textile materials, the structures and properties of the constituent polymers have a significant effect on the biodegradability, biocompatibility, absorbency, antimicrobial property, and other functional performances of the final medical textile products. Functional modifications of polymers have far-reaching effects on the fibers, yams, fabrics, and textile materials that are processed in a series of downstream operations. In order to generate the desired product performance characteristics for their diverse applications such as hygiene, protection, therapeutic, nonimplantable or implantable materials, extracorporeal devices, etc., the chemical and physical structures of the relevant polymers should be engineered to suit their required specifications. 

Textile materials are materials for the daily use. Besides, textiles are also play a vital role in fashion shows. Technically, they are applied in variety of our life savers including safety belt, and the airbags in the cars, bulletproof vests protect against weapons, used as Implant material in medical applications. Recently, pol3mrethane (PU) foams that can be combined with Platilon thermoplastic pol5mrethane (TPU) films are used as excellent material for functional medical wound dressing which are not only help wounds to heal but also allow the wound to breathe by permeate the water-vapor [70, 71]. 

Because textile materials are lightweight, flexible and strong polymers and biological tissues are themselves fibrous polymers, with very similar dimensional, physical and mechanical properties, they have found numerous applications as bioimplants. From their use as sutures and ligatures many thousands of years ago, to hernia repair meshes and vascular grafts in the present century, textiles continue to be explored for use in newer and better performing medical products. The currently available implants can be categorized as one-, two- or three-dimensional structures. 

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. 

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