Abstract

AN OVERVIEW OF POLYMER BIOMEDICAL MATERIALS USED IN CARDIOLOGY

Kiganda Raymond Sembatya, Ziwei Liu, Reyaj Mikrani and Xiaohui Zhou*

Abstract

Cardiology disorders have been reported to be the leading cause of fatalities in modern countries accounting to the highest percentage of the health budget. The highly increasing number of hospitalization related to cardiology disorders has given rise to various approaches like medical and surgical interventions. Even though these methods have proved beneficial there’s still high rate of death associated to the disorder. The scarcity of donors and donor complication related to surgery have paved was for alternative treatment and research like the use of biomedical implants to overcome certain anomalies. Significant advances in material science, engineering and biotechnology have enabled the possibility to use biomedical implants in the human body. The rise in the demand for biomedical implants has sparked of research in the biomedical material field in order to find a ―perfect‖ biomedical material for medical implants. These studies show that these materials are a specific group of materials that are characterized by different material composition, chemical structure and mechanical, chemical and biological properties. In this review we highlight the most common polymer biomedical materials used in cardiology with reference to biocompatibility.

Keywords: Biomedical materials, medical implants, biocompatibility, polymers, cardiology.