Textiles for extra
Textiles for extracorporeal biomedical devices
Textile
materials are used in mechanical organs such as artificial kidneys, artificial
livers and mechanical lungs (blood oxygenator) for blood purification. In the
artificial kidney, blood is circulated through membrane that retains unwanted
waste materials ,the membrane may be a flat sheet or a bundle of hollow
regenerated cellulose fibers in the form of cellophane . Multi- layer fabrics,
made of several layers of needle punched fabrics with different densities are
also used in artificial kidney . Blood purification is an effective thereby for
incurables such as renal failure. It is used to correct the abnormality of
blood quality and quantity. Mechanical
lungs use micro- porous membranes that provide high permeability for gas flow
and low permeability for liquid flow which is similar to the natural lung where
oxygen and blood come into contact. In these devices oxygen flows around hollow
fibers at extremely low pressure, blood flows inside of the fiber, the oxygen
permeates the micro-pores of the fiber and comes in contact with the blood and
oxygen is kept near zero to prevent mixing of oxygen with blood. Red blood
cells capture oxygen by diffusion process. (4)
