Editorial: New Textile Materials for Medical Applications

Textile-based materials for medical use are helping to improve people?s lives?and in some cases transform them. Some idea of the potential, and the technologies already in existence, can be gleaned from the report ?Developments in Medical Textiles? by Don Sanders, starting on page 97 of this issue.

Some developments are relatively simple?such as wound dressings containing active agents. Others are more complicated, and include complex stents which are put inside a patient?s arteries and veins to support them, as well as textile scaffolds for use in tissue engineering. Textile fibres are also being used in nerve regeneration techniques.

Wound dressings incorporating antibiotics and drugs which are designed to stop bleeding are being used to deliver medication to the precise area where they are needed. Drugs applied locally tend to be more effective than those delivered via the bloodstream. Also, the quantities needed tend to be smaller and, in the event of an adverse reaction, the treatment can be stopped quickly by removing the dressing.

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• Developments in medical textiles, 3rd quarter 2007, (3rd quarter 2007)

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