Testing of Medical Textile Products

Textiles are used in a variety of medical applications, including dressing and treating wounds, a wide variety of suture materials, textile-based implant structures (for example, hernia net implants) and surgical drapes and clothing. Materials used include natural and synthetic fibers, together with breathable films and material combinations. The many different products and materials used in this area call for a wide range of materials and function tests.

To avoid the problem of individual fibers of gauze bandages catching on the roll below and preventing reliable unrolling, it is necessary to determine the force required to unwind the bandages from a roll. For this, a 10-kN ZwickRoell materials testing machine is used, together with a motor-driven unrolling unit. The sequence is controlled by a specially adapted program from ZwickRoell’s testXpert II testing software. This test fixture can also be used for pull-off tests on plaster (band-aid) strips.

These materials are often used as wound dressings and as a component part of dressing materials, as an alcohol swab for preparing injections, or in physiotherapeutic applications. They are an integral part of patient and instrument drapes in the operating theater and used as a cover for dental tampons. The tests carried out on this material are as varied as the range of applications of the end products. One important test in this field is the tensile test on strip specimens (EN ISO 29073-3/ISO 9073-3/ASTM D5035). The measured value is the maximum tensile force as the average value per direction of removal. The coefficient of variation for the results is calculated. Other important test methods include absorption capacity (EN ISO 9073-6) and strike-through time for liquids (EN ISO 9073-8). A zwicki or ProLine (Z005) testing machine is typically used for these tests.