Têxil para aplicação médica

: o impacto da origem dos materiais na citocompatibilidade com células humanas

Abstract

Nowadays, thousands of surgeries are performed daily and, although advances in science and technology have led to an improvement in the quality of surgery and patient recovery, medical errors remain a critical factor that must be taken into account. One of the most common medical errors that can have damaging consequences for a patient's life is the retention of surgical materials, such as gauze, inside the patient’s body. The aim of the following work is to explore a solution to this problem, based on the evaluation of the impact of impregnating gauze with bioactive solutions. To this end, two types of gauze were tested, namely woven (W) and non-woven (NW), which were then impregnated with different bioactive compounds, specifically chitosan and NaturALL, an alternative to conventional chemicals developed by the biotechnology start-up Tech4MED. In this context, direct contact and leachate tests were carried out before and after subjecting the gauzes to an ageing process. For this study, two cell lines were used, namely fibroblasts (BJ), cells commonly found in the skin and other body parts, and colon cells (HCT-15). Thus, the aim of this thesis is to evaluate the cytotoxicity level of different gauzes and impregnation techniques on representative cell lines, considering the environment in which they will be inserted, both in a control situation (basal neutral environment, pH=7.21) and in a situation of acute and chronic inflammation (acidic environment, pH=6.04). Hereby, before being subjected to the ageing process, it was verified that impregnation with NaturALL and chitosan resulted in an increase in cell viability compared to the control, higher than 70 % under certain conditions, thus obtaining a biocompatible gauze. After being subjected to the ageing process in both the direct contact and leachate tests, the NaturALL solution produced promising results. Particularly in the case of chronic inflammation (direct contact), NaturALL resulted in an increase in cell viability above the acceptable value for a medical product to be characterized as cytocompatible, namely 70 % cell viability. NaturALL addition was therefore hypothesised to have the capacity to improve the interaction between material and cell proliferation. This capacity was verified for both the BJ and HCT-15 cell lines. In short, it can be concluded that the impregnation of woven and non-woven gauze (compresses) with NaturALL results in the production of a biocompatible medical textile. Although this does not eliminate the occurrence of retained surgical objects inside the human body, the produced results in this thesis project can be relevant. In this way, an alternative to traditional gauze was developed with the aim of reducing the possible consequences of retaining a gauze inside the human body.

Date of Award	17 Nov 2023
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Maria José Peixoto de Sousa (Supervisor), Raphaël Faustino Canadas (Co-Supervisor) & Viviana Ribeiro (Co-Supervisor)