About Coatings For Blood-Contacting Devices
Most of today’s blood-contacting medical devices are made of synthetic materials. When blood contacts these materials foreign to the body, a number of adverse reactions are triggered-including platelet attachment, platelet activation, and complement activation-that eventually lead to fibrin production and clot formation. These clots can impair the function of the device. More drastically, they can occlude critical vessels at the implant location or be released into the patient’s blood stream, where they can obstruct distant blood vessels, potentially leading to strokes or even death.
Just as more and better implantable medical devices are being developed specifically for introduction into the body’s circulatory system, more and better hemocompatible surface modifications are being introduced for those devices. Surface modification is growing in interest and in use across a wide range of applications. Now viewed as a competitive necessity rather than a luxury feature, the enhancement of surface characteristics has rapidly become an essential element in the development process for medical devices.
( Abstracted from an article by : Aron B. Anderson, PhD and , David Clapper, PhD as appeared in " Medical Plastics And Biomaterials )
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