What is medical textiles

Medical textiles is a new field formed by the combination of textile technology and medical science, and is one of the most innovative and high-tech varieties of textiles. With the development of new fibers and new manufacturing processes of yarns and fabrics, medical textiles are also moving towards new applications.

According to different uses, it can be divided into four categories of products, namely: non-invasive materials, implanted materials, extracorporeal devices (such as artificial kidney), medical and sanitary textiles (such as gauze, doctor's work clothes, patient clothes, bed sheets, surgical towels, etc.). According to different processing technologies, medical textiles can be generally divided into ordinary textiles, non-woven fabrics, knitwear, and special fabrics (such as perforated fabrics and other fabrics with good permeability, which can be used for medical products such as skin patches).

The existing medical textiles on the international market include: absorbent pads, wound contact cloth (bandage) basic materials, simple bandages and elastic bandages, high support bandages, compression bandages, plastic bandages, rubber pastes, gauze bandages, cotton flannel (special bandage materials), medical padding and skeleton materials (scaffold, refers to the basic materials for processing other medical textiles), etc. In addition to traditional cotton and other bulk raw materials, the raw materials for the production of the above medical textiles have expanded to natural fiber raw materials such as alginate fiber, silk, chitosan fiber (chitosan fiber), wood pulp fiber (lyocell), cotton wool, and elastic and non-elastic chemical fiber raw materials such as polyethylene, polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) fiber, polypropylene, polyester, glass fiber, viscose fiber, polyglycolic acid fiber, polyurethane, polylactic acid fiber.