Suture materials biological properties

Table 10.1 summarizes the characteristics of each of the four essential properties. It is important to recognize that these characteristics are interrelated. For example, capillarity of a suture material, which is a physical/ mechanical property, is closely related to the ability of the suture to transport bacteria, which is a biological property. The modulus of elasticity, a physical/mechanical property, affects the pliability of sutures, a handling property. A brief description of each of those essential properties will be given below and they are Usted in Tables 10.1 through 10.7. Readers should be aware of the fact that the data in the tables vary with the specific clinical and/or physical environments that suture materials are subjected to and the constant refining of manufacturing processes by suture manufacturers. 

Artificial Soft Biologies. In addition to sutures, polymers are used for a number of biomedical applications, as illustrated in Figure 5.128. Polymers used for hard structural applications such as dentures and bones are presented in this figure, but will be described in the next section. In this section, we will concentrate on polymers for soft biological material applications and will limit the description to mechanical properties as much as possible. 

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. 

In contrast, spider silk is devoid of sericin and hence does not evoke the same biological or immunological reactions. Thus, spider silk has better biocompatibility and is a preferred biomaterial for suture applications. It has also been studied as a material for regenerative nerve conduits to promote peripheral nerve regeneration [33]. Silk s unique mechanical properties coupled with its ability to be fabricated into different textile structures enable its use in tissue engineering scaffolds that mimic the mechanical properties of native tissues. For example, silk filaments have been converted into a braided rope stracture that acts as a scaffold for the regeneration of anterior cruciate ligaments (ACL) [34]. 

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