TEXTILE COMPOSITE MATERIALS FOR SMALL INTESTINE REPLACEMENT

Abstract

Abstract Down to the present day there are no sufficient techniques for a small intestine replacement, mostly because of the high standards for such implants. An indication for the need of novel operation techniques is the small patient survival rate of just 80 % for isolated small intestine transplantation and 62 % for combined liver-small intestine transplantation. The five year survival rates of the patients are merely 42 %. In order to overcome these limitations the authors are developing a partly resorbable textile-foam-composite for small intestine replacement The novel implant consists of a non resorbable textile PVDF mesh which is foamed with a micro porous, resorbable, and drug loaded polymer. The resorbable polymer serves on the one hand as initial sealing, therefore no intestine substance and bacteria can leak out into surrounding tissue, on the other hand it needs to be micro porous in order to ensure cell ingrowth. For the macro porous textile mesh warp knitting technology is used. The warp knitted tubular structure remains inside the body as a long term implant and provides mechanical support to ingrowing cells. In order to evaluate biomechanical properties of the warp knitted tubular PVDF meshes to compare them to the mechanical characteristics of small intestine tissue, tensile tests were conducted. Results of tensile tests on warp knitted structures with three different loop densities of 8, 12, and 16 loops per cm were compared to tensile tests on native small intestine tissue probes. The recorded curves of small intestine and warp knitted structures showed similar characteristics. The two characteristic Young Modules as well as the curve progression of the warp knitted structure with 12 loops per cm showed good accordance to the values of the native small intestine. Morphological analysis of the textile structures by digital image processing showed adequate pore size and porosity of the textile mesh.