Superhydrophobic blood-repellent tubes for clinical cardiac surgery

Abstract

Superhydrophobic coatings are gaining importance not only in military technology, industrial engineering, power systems and transportation, but also in food science and biomedicine, where they have enormous potential for real-time applications. Many research institutes have recently been working on the development of superhydrophobic blood-repellent tubes to replace clinical heparin-coated tubes during ECMO therapy, but biological toxicity and high blood adhesion have significantly hampered their practical applications. In this study, we created a cardiopulmonary bypass tube with good superhydrophobicity and blood repellency. In terms of biotoxicity, coagulation time, protein and platelet adsorption, the results show that the superhydrophobic-treated tube clotted in 36 min, compared to 21 min for a clinical Bioline heparin-coated tube and 14 min for bare PVC tube. When compared to the bare PVC tube, the clotting time of the superhydrophobic-treated tube was increased by 157% due to the Cassie-Baxter wetting state of the resulting superhydrophobic blood-repellent coating. Meanwhile, the protein and platelet adsorption on the superhydrophobic-treated tube were decreased by 32% and 74%, respectively. It should be noted that we were the first to explain the superhydrophobic anti-platelet adsorption mechanism from the perspective of inhibiting thromboxane-A2 secretion during blood coagulation. Clarification of platelet activation process and activating substances is vital for understanding the anticoagulant properties of superhydrophobic coatings. On the other hand, non-inflammatory response of the organism was confirmed in the vivo experiments and the cell viability after a 48-hour cytotoxicity assay was about 101%, indicating that the superhydrophobic-treated tubes are non-toxic.