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Review
. 2015 Jun 30;6(3):500-25.
doi: 10.3390/jfb6030500.

Medical Textiles as Vascular Implants and Their Success to Mimic Natural Arteries

Charanpreet Singh  1 , Cynthia S Wong  2 , Xungai Wang  3   4
Affiliations
Review

Medical Textiles as Vascular Implants and Their Success to Mimic Natural Arteries

Charanpreet Singh et al. J Funct Biomater. .

Abstract

Vascular implants belong to a specialised class of medical textiles. The basic purpose of a vascular implant (graft and stent) is to act as an artificial conduit or substitute for a diseased artery. However, the long-term healing function depends on its ability to mimic the mechanical and biological behaviour of the artery. This requires a thorough understanding of the structure and function of an artery, which can then be translated into a synthetic structure based on the capabilities of the manufacturing method utilised. Common textile manufacturing techniques, such as weaving, knitting, braiding, and electrospinning, are frequently used to design vascular implants for research and commercial purposes for the past decades. However, the ability to match attributes of a vascular substitute to those of a native artery still remains a challenge. The synthetic implants have been found to cause disturbance in biological, biomechanical, and hemodynamic parameters at the implant site, which has been widely attributed to their structural design. In this work, we reviewed the design aspect of textile vascular implants and compared them to the structure of a natural artery as a basis for assessing the level of success as an implant. The outcome of this work is expected to encourage future design strategies for developing improved long lasting vascular implants.

Keywords: anisotropy; artery; braiding; compliance; electrospinning; graft; knitting; non-linearity; vascular stent; weaving.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Comparison of pressure-diameter curves between an artery and a synthetic implant.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Role of fibrous components (elastin and collagen) in shaping the pressure-diameter relation of an artery.
Figure 3
Figure 3
The role of compliance in the windkessel function of aorta.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Structural design patterns of a woven Dacron® graft.
Figure 5
Figure 5
An explanation of thebilayer woven graft design concept proposed by Chen et al. [46].
Figure 6
Figure 6
Structural design patterns of a knitted Dacron® graft.
Figure 7
Figure 7
The segmented design concept as proposed by Singh and Wang to improve the compliance property of a knitted vascular implant [70,71].
Figure 8
Figure 8
Structural geometry of a braided metallic stent (α = braid helix angle).
Figure 9
Figure 9
The wall thickness (a) and surface (b) view of an electrospun mesh.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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