Nano-cellulose coating small-caliber artificial blood vessel

摘要

This paper designs a type of small artificial blood vessel in a composite structure, which the nano cellulose coating is attached to the tube blank. The properties of this type of artificial blood vessel - radical and axial tensile property, area of aperture gaps - are observed by an electron microscopy and analyzed to prepare for the further experiments. There is a growing awareness that health is important in the wake of developments in society and civilization. However, human-being are not able to slow down the process of aging, damaging and degeneration of organs, not to mention blood vessel. Therefore, it is of great significance to research and design medical artificial blood vessel. At present, millions of blood vessel transplant operations have been performed successfully per year, especially in large vessel transplant. Whereas, the results of small vessel - under 6 mm - transplant are not so desirable. The reason is that the small artificial blood vessel is scarcely antithrombotic. The flow rate in small vessel is so low that the shearing force between the blood and material becomes too weak, which leads to increasing the probability of thrombus. The small artificial blood vessel requires better blood compatibility, or better anticoagulant activity and more antithrombotic which the current materials do not meet [1,2]. Through further analysis, we can know that the common medical artificial blood vessel material is apt to interact with the plasma albumin, which leads to the production of attached thrombus. Recently, the approach of processing the inner wall of vessel is adopted to reduce the thrombus. For example, in the patent 'A textile improved composite artificial blood vessel', an approach that using anticoagulant layer, textile improved layer and binder to make composite artificial blood vessel has been introduced, which can improve the flow rate in artificial vessel to some extent. The deficiency of the approach is that the three layers make the vessel wall too thick to apply to small vessel. Moreover, due to its complication, it is difficult to produce at large quantities [3]. Bacterial cellulose is also called microbial cellulose. It is another kind of natural inertial material composed by the bacteria, besides vegetable cellulose. Bacterial cellulose is not only of great biological affinity, biological compatibility, biological adaptability and bio-degradable, but also has excellent mechanical ductility. Thus it is generally acknowledged as a new kind of biological material of good performance. In this paper, a new textile structure is proposed. Through this structure, textile vessel and nano cellulose coating can be combined firmly to form a new kind of composite small artificial blood vessel. This kind of small vessel is not only of desirable flow rate by preventing thrombus from forming and proliferation, but also of excellent biological compatibility biomechanical performance [4].