Contribution of textiles to medical and healthcare products and developing innovative medical devices

215-229The application of medical textiles used in woundcare nursing, implants, and healthcare and hygiene products has been discussed. The production and properties of biodegradable polysaccharide fibres obtained from natural sources, such as alginate, chitin/chitosan, collagen, catgut and branan ferulate, have been highlighted. Speciality medical polymeric fibres used for producing wound dressings, bandages and textile scaffolds for tissue culture have been presented. In addition, the difficulties encountered by elderly people due to venous leg ulcers and a specific research and development programme carried out at the University of Bolton in developing novel padding and compression bandages for the treatment of venous leg ulcers have also been critically discussed. It is observed that the developed padding bandages meet most of the criteria required for ideal bandages and have excellent pressure distribution property around the limb over the existing commercial padding bandages. The pressure profiling of the novel padding bandages in two-layer, three-layer and four-layer systems has been studied