MEDICAL TUBING | MATERIALS
Developments in medical tubing include highly engineered catheters for advanced treatment, ongoing efforts to recycle PVC products – and several alternatives to PVC
Health benefits: recent advances in medical tubing
Tubing remains a critical – though hidden – product within the medical industry, thanks to its role in everything from bedside machinery to advanced catheters. At last year’s Medical Tubing event in the USA –
organised by AMI – Gowri Dorairaju, technology development manager at Foster, explained the need for radiopaque (RO) polymer compounds in the medical industry. These are compounds that attenuate X-rays differently to soft tissues and bones. “This provides a visual contrast – yielding an
image of the device in the body,” he said. “RO materials provide visibility under X-rays for clear navigation during minimally invasive medical procedures.”
Examples include various catheters or guide
wires that are inserted into the body. Polymers are typically transparent to X-rays but
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can be rendered opaque by adding RO fillers – typically dense metal or ceramic powders – such as barium sulphate or oxychloride, bismuth trioxide and tungsten. These are used at various filler loadings to achieve the desired effect. Selecting the right one is based on the mechani-
cal properties and functional needs to the com- pound, including factors such as how it is sterilised. The additive is compounded into the base resin before moulding or extrusion. Foster prepared a series of Pebax compounds with varying levels of barium sulphate, barium oxychloride, bismuth subcarbonate and tungsten. Hardness was almost unaffected – compared to a control – while high loadings increased tensile and flexural properties.
Only an 80% tungsten-filled grade showed any appreciable variation in viscosity.
� Summer 2024 | PIPE & PROFILE EXTRUSION 15
Main image: Tubing is a critical application of plastics
– whether PVC or alternative materials – in the medical industry
IMAGE: SHUTTERSTOCK
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