INDUSTRY NEWS
 |
Conference chairman Gerry McNally welcomes an international audience to Queen’s University Belfast for the Society of Plastics Engineers’ first European Medical Polymers Conference. McNally is a founding member and director of the university’s Polymer Processing Research Centre.
|
Today’s med-tech industry has the good fortune to draw from a rich palette of polymers, copolymers, and polymer blends and an array of manufacturing techniques. On the downside, that is a lot of technology to master. The first Society of Plastics Engineers’ European Medical Polymers Conference sought to address a number of the materials and technology challenges facing industry. The two-day event, which took place at Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland from 2 to 4 September, included numerous technical presentations on new polymers in medical devices and packaging, biomedical engineering, material processing, and medical device assembly. But the first day’s welcome took a more philosophical tack and trumpeted the merits of a collaborative approach.
The importance of collaboration among universities, industry, and the government was stressed in the opening remarks from a trio of personalities: conference chairman Gerry McNally from Queen’s University Belfast; John Thompson, director of knowledge exploitation at Queen’s, and Len Czuba, former president of the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE).
Cooperation and partnerships are becoming increasingly important, as the medical device and healthcare industries continue to grow worldwide, with Europe leading the way. The university’s own Medical Polymers Research Institute (MPRI), for instance, carries out industrially relevant fundamental and applied research on polymeric biomaterials for the development of medical devices and packaging. The MPRI was recently established as an addition to Queen’s University Belfast’s Polymer Processing Research Centre.
The Effect of Gamma Rays on PP
The pace picked up dramatically on the second day of the conference, as a cadre of tightly focused technical sessions took centre stage to touch on topics ranging from biomedical engineering to sterilization matters. On the latter subject, Don Fleming of Fleming Polymer Testing and Consultancy (Kidderminster, UK) presented a paper extolling the use of capillary rheometry to assess the radiation tolerance of polymers, predict when a failure may occur, and ultimately assist in selecting a grade of material.
Polypropylene (PP) is widely used in medical applications because it is tough, cost-effective, easy to mould, and requires no preprocess drying. It has one significant drawback, however: PP is more susceptible to radiation damage than most other polymers.
Because of PP’s desirable properties, a great deal of resources have been put into overcoming this problem. One example is the effort to develop radiation-stabilized PP. According to Fleming, however, rheological testing performed on a radiation-stabilized PP moulding showed that the material still experienced dramatic viscosity reduction. This led to increased brittleness, rendering the device unusable. “This shows that radiation-stabilized materials don’t always work,” Fleming told attendees, pointing to capillary rheometry as a uniquely sensitive technique suitable for assessing the radiation tolerance of polymers.
Better than Stainless Steel?
At another session on the same day, the focus shifted to material properties in reinforcement applications. Jason Aherne from Teijin Aramid BV (Arnhem, Netherlands) presented a paper titled “Micro p-aramid Composite Rods to Replace Stainless Steel Wire as Reinforcement in Medical Devices.”
Teijin has developed micro p-aramid composite rods for the reinforcement of devices such as angioplasty catheters. Because of the small diameters of the wires and the need for compressive properties, an alternative to stainless steel has not been found, until now. According to Aherne, Teijin’s micro p-aramid composite rods are a suitable replacement for stainless steel because they have all the reinforcing properties yet are nonmagnetic, enabling their use with magnetic resonance imaging equipment.
The fibre rods have not been deployed, as of yet. But Aherne adamantly believes that “high-performance fibres are the future,” and Teijin is currently looking for interested parties to perform initial trials.
SPE was pleased with the results of the inaugural European Conference on Medical Polymers and it plans to organize similar events in the future. For more information about its activities, contact Society of Plastics Engineers Europe, Eric Sasselaan 51, 2020 Antwerp, Belgium; phone: +32 35 417755; fax: +32 35 418425; e-mail: spe.europe@skynet.be; Internet: www.4spe.org.
