Plastics in Biomedical and Healthcare Applications

Biocompatibility is a very critical, basic safety requirement for medical polymers in medical device applications. For this, it is essential that  

In these, production of any adverse effects can be translated as the possible migration of any toxins should not exist , while the last part regarding sterilisation, no toxic degradation products should be allowed can be understood. For these, the basic plastic material will be of importance. 

Plastics have a basic role in the medical device and packaging industries, mostly for the low volume/high value specialty products, because  

Spedalty plastics snch as PC, acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS), PU, polyamides (PA), thermoplastic elastomers, polysnlfone and polyetheretherketone (PEEK) are being used in a nnmber of special applications in medical devices, whenever high performance is required. There are also a number of polymer blends used in this category (i.e., PC/ABS and PC/polyester), if property envelopes are required to be further improved. 

Around a quarter of all plastic medical products are made of the commodity plastic PVC (Le., blood bags/tubing, catheters, dialysis equipment, mouthpieces and masks, oxygen delivery equipment, labware, and medical packaging), because it has low cost, is easily adaptable to a number of applications, and it is easy to process. 

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