Medical Textiles Textile Institute Professional Publications Series

This textbook aims to ensure that advances in medical textiles are addressed and that recent developments are able to be appreciated and understood not only by medical practitioners and healthcare personnel but also by textile scientists and technologists. The idea is to stimulate collaborative research and development in the field of medical textiles and to equip researchers with an understanding of the steps they need to take to ensure that their efforts, be they to develop new devices for implantation or items for external application, are carried out in such a way as to improve their effectiveness and enhance the prospects for their implementation. Attention is drawn to the need to improve outcomes in the practical setting and to guidance on the detailed planning required prior to engaging in experimental work. Standard tests can help researchers to monitor performance, but for some important applications such as those required to demonstrate antimicrobial and fluid-repellent performance in most items of protective wear, standard tests consistently fall seriously short in terms of predicting how well they might work in the practical setting. Guidance is therefore given for their further development.

Chapters within the textbook cover:

• The history of innovation within medical textiles with particular attention given to key concepts of the latter part of the 19th Century and subsequent associated developments.
• Textile and polymer science underpinning fibres, fabrics, nano-fibre technology and the functional finishes that can be applied to enhance the performance of medical textile products.
• Woven, knitted, nonwoven and braided fabrics and the key performance characteristics of each fabric type which make them particularly suited to specific medical textile roles such as mesh, grafts, filtration and scaffolds for tissue engineering.
• Implantable medical textiles, non-implantable medical textiles, health and hygiene products and extracorporeal devices that use textile products.
• Legislative requirements for medical devices.
• The design of experiments and suitability for purpose of textile test methods.
• Case studies to illustrate how medical textiles are applied in practice.

The book provides essential reading for textile professionals, biomedical engineers, and others involved in the research, design and engineering of medical and healthcare appliances, and for those employed in the medical profession wishing to gain new insights into the wealth of materials at their disposal.

Chapter 1 Introduction

Chapter 2 The Development of Textiles in Medicine and the Healthcare Environment over Time

Chapter 3 Textile Materials for Healthcare and Medical Applications

Chapter 4 Fibre Types and the Polymers Used in Medical Textiles

Chapter 5 Medical Textiles: Finishing

Chapter 6 Ensuring Regulatory Compliance

Chapter 7 Implantable Medical Textiles

Chapter 8 Non-implantable Medical Textiles

Chapter 9 Healthcare, Hygiene, and Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)

Chapter 10 Extracorporeal Devices

Chapter 11 Intelligent (SMART) Medical and Healthcare Textiles

Chapter 12 Case Studies

Chapter 13 Medical Textiles: The State of the Art

Ms Holly Morris holds dual professional registration across the medical and textile industries. Internationally trained, Holly is a registered medical professional currently completing higher surgical training in Trauma and Orthopaedics with a subspeciality interest in Hand Surgery. She is a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.

Holly’s childhood love of textiles led her to gain a formal textile qualification through a Master of Applied Science at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. Her thesis centred around the role of textile technology in implantable bioscaffolds used within regenerative medicine and was co-supervised by Professor Raechel Laing and Associate Professor David Gwynne-Jones. Since her return to the United Kingdom to complete higher surgical training in Trauma and Orthopaedics, near her family in the textile-infused East Midlands, she has continued to develop an interest in the field of medical textiles.

As a Fellow of the Textile Institute, Holly already has several publications in professional literature including, most recently, a Review of the Medical Textiles sector which appears in the Textile Progress series. Her interests centre the importance of upholding patient safety to the highest standards whilst welcoming innovation and technological progress, sustainability and the development of new devices.

Holly is involved with a postgraduate Masters and PhD programme in Medical Device Design and supervises postgraduate students. In addition, she is currently part of ENG4, a Not-For-Profit collaboration of professionals and volunteers designing and developing garments for the COVID-19 pandemic. The group was awarded the 2021 Institution of Engineering Designers' Gerald Frewer Memorial Trophy. Holly enjoys mentoring juniors within the medical profession and has a healthy regard for fellow nonconformists.

Professor Richard Murray was Pro-Vice Chancellor International and Dean of the Hollings F