In medical clinics, we often see various types of silicone products and accessories, such as medical silicone tubes, oximeter finger pads, respiratory silicone masks, needle silicone stoppers, and silicone straps tied to hands. Currently, besides pharmaceuticals, medical devices are the most widely used application in the medical device industry. So why are medical silicone rubber accessories so popular?
Why Can Silicone Rubber Be Used as a Medical Polymer Material?
Medical polymer materials refer to polymer materials used in medicine, an emerging discipline bridging modern medicine and polymer science. They are inanimate materials designed for medical purposes, intended to come into contact with living tissue for diagnosing, treating, or replacing tissues or organs in the body, thereby enhancing their function. This field involves multiple interdisciplinary subjects such as physics, chemistry, biology, pathology, medicine, and transfusion science. Medical silicone rubber is one of the important varieties of medical polymer materials.
1. Silicone rubber is a high-performance medical material. Its material cost is relatively low, it is highly practical, unlikely to cause rejection reactions, harmless to the human body, and possesses good biocompatibility.
2. Silicone rubber products have excellent medical characteristics: they are colorless, non-toxic, resistant to high temperatures and oxidation, flexible, and highly transparent. Silicone products can solve certain medical challenges and fulfill patients' medical needs.
3. Blood coagulation properties: Toxicity test results meet medical requirements; they show good biocompatibility in clinical applications, with no teratogenic effects or allergic reactions; they possess excellent toughness and elasticity, good processability, and diverse processing methods, making them the preferred material for manufacturing various medical elastomeric products; they also demonstrate excellent wear resistance, soft touch, moisture resistance, and resistance to various chemicals.
Due to the above characteristics, silicone rubber is suitable for forming products like tubes/sheets in various shapes. Consequently, it is currently the most widely used type of medical polymer material, capable of essentially meeting different usage requirements, with its consumption showing a sustained and stable growth trend.
Wide Application of Silicone Rubber Products in the Medical Field
Currently, the two most widely used materials in medical devices are silicone rubber and polyurethane. Polyurethane offers excellent biocompatibility, good mechanical properties, ease of molding and processing, and controllable performance. Silicone rubber products offer advantages such as excellent physiological inertness and good biocompatibility. Both materials were discovered early in medical science and continue to be researched and followed by professionals in the field.
Silicone rubber products are based on high molecular weight linear polyorganosiloxane, to which specific ingredients are added. They are processed according to certain technological requirements into rubbery elastomers with specific strength and elongation.
Medical-grade silicone used in healthcare equipment possesses a series of excellent characteristics, including high-temperature resistance, oxidation resistance, hydrophobicity, flexibility, permeability, high transparency upon aging, good physiological inertness, non-adherence to human tissues and blood, excellent biocompatibility, non-toxicity, odorlessness, and non-carcinogenicity.
Medical Silicone Rubber Possesses Excellent Characteristics Not Found in Ordinary Silicone
As a high-performance medical polymer material, silicone rubber has attracted the attention of professionals in the rubber industry and the medical field. This is because using silicone as a medical material involves high technical content, low cost, high added value, and considerable economic benefits. Leveraging the medical properties of silicone rubber can solve many medical problems, providing patients with satisfactory treatment outcomes. Silicone rubber products are versatile, facilitating production for silicone product manufacturers and yielding good social and economic benefits.
