In the interview with COMPAMED-tradefair.com, D. Eng. Andreas Blaeser explains to us what medical textiles are, what special requirements they have to meet and what is currently happening in this area.
Dr. Blaeser, today you gave the lecture "Recent advances in medical textiles and biofabrication technology" at COMPAMED SUPPLIERS FORUM. Where do we find such medical textiles?
D. Eng. Andreas Blaeser: In the extracorporeal sector, medical textiles are used, for example, as compression stockings, surgical clothing or smart medical textiles, i.e. textile-integrated sensor technology for measuring bodily functions. Textiles are used intracorporeally as wound dressings, reconstruction nets, vascular prostheses, sutures or as scaffolding structures for tissue cultivation, i.e. tissue engineering or regenerative medicine.
Why are these textiles particularly suitable for use in medicine?
Blaeser: Textile structures are characterized by the fact that their physical, biological and chemical properties can be adjusted precisely and in part independently of each other. The fibre or yarn forms the basic building block for textile material morphology. Depending on how it is processed, a high-strength fiber can be processed into a very elastic implant, for example. Another advantage of textile structures is their high elasticity and drapability. At the Institute for Textile Technology in Aachen, various technologies are used to manufacture medical-textile surfaces such as woven, knitted and nonwoven fabrics. We set a special accent with the knitting technology used in our company. Warp knitting makes it possible to produce medical knitwear with precisely adjustable mechanics and porosity. We take advantage of this special feature to produce scaffold structures for the tissue growth of blood vessels, heart valves and tissues of the musculoskeletal system - i.e. bones, cartilage and muscles.