Silicone prosthetic devices

Silicone elastomers find use as gaskets and seals, wire and cable insulation and hot gas and liquid conduits. They also find use in surgical and prosthetic devices. The RTV elastomers are used for sealing and encapsulating. 

Due to their relative inertness, new applications have emerged in the biomedical field. A silicone rubber ball is used in combination with a fluorocarbon seal to replace defective human heart valves. Silicone rubber has had many applications in reconstructive surgery on or near the surface of the body. Prosthetic devices are very successfully used in all parts of the body. 

Applications and uses electronics circuit boards, sensors, integrated circuits/hybrids, MEM devices, motor assemblies, coil forms, silicon wafers medical needles, prosthetic devices. 

The design and development of prosthetic devices has been supported in government and nongovernment sectors alike. The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory has developed prosthetic arms that are rechargeable and motor-driven for people unable to use prosthetics that depend on muscle activity. Alatheia Prosthetics of Brandon, Mississippi, has developed an artificial skin that closely resembles human skin. At Alatheia, architects use medical-grade silicone to create realistic tissue to ensure every crease, pore, and fingerprint is perfect for each patient. 

Biocompatible and lubricous coatings Crosslinked or grafted coatings have been used on contact lenses to enhance wetting, on silicone rubber indwelling catheters to prevent occlusion, and on prosthetic devices, such as artificial valves, intraocular lenses, vascular grafts, and pacemakers to improve device biocompatibility. [66-71 ]... 

Prosthetic devices have been widely used to compensate for defects either of congenital or acquired origin. Silicone elastomers, silicone rubber or polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS - Figure 8.1) are well-known materials for the production... 

Class III—Premarket Approval Devices that support or sustain life or present a significant risk of illness or injury fall under the Class-Ill category. Implants, such as pacemakers and silicone gel breast implants, are Class-Ill products, as are internal tissue adhesives, thermal ablation devices, synthetic ligaments and tendons, vacumn pumps, and prosthetic hips. Class-Ill accounts for about 10% of aU medical devices. 

Suppose there could be prosthetic C-fibers, perhaps made of silicon, and that the stimulation of these can realize pain in essentially the same way, whatever that is, that the stimulation of C-fibers can. Stimulation of these would not activate an accurate natural C-fiber-stimulation detector, though it would activate some other sort of device. We can suppose that in a case where pain is realized in natural C-fiber stimulation and in a case where pain is realized in prosthetic C-fiber stimulation, the cores of the pain instance realizers are states of affairs of the same sort. The properties involved in these states of affairs are functional ones shared by natural C fibers and prosthetic ones. This is not, of course, to say that the cores of all pain instance realizers are states of affairs of the same sort. If, as David Lewis imagined, Martian pain is realized in the inflation of tiny cavities in the feet, the cores of Martian pain instance realizers will be very different from the cores of human pain instance realizers. But it is compatible with this that in any particular case of pain instantiation, the instance of pain has a realizer whose core is different from, though part of, the core of the realizer of the instance of the physical property that is the property realizer of the pain. In our case, the core of the realizer of the pain instance is different from, though part of, the core of the realizer of the C-fiber-stimulation instance. 

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