Smart Design of Sensor-Coated Surgical Sutures for Bacterial Infection Monitoring.

Virtually, all implantable medical devices are susceptible of infection. As the main health care issue concerning implantable devices is the elevated risk of infection, different strategies based on the coating or functionalization of biomedical devices with antiseptic agents or antibiotics have been proposed. In this work we present an alternative approach, which consists of the functionalization of implantable medical devices with sensors capable of detecting infection at very early stages through continuous monitoring of the bacteria metabolism. This approach, which has been implemented in surgical sutures as a representative case of implantable devices susceptible of bacteria colonization, is expected to minimize the risk of worsening the patient's clinical condition. More specifically, non-absorbable polypropylene/polyethylene surgical sutures have been functionalized with conducting polymers using a combination of low-pressure oxygen plasma, chemical oxidative polymerization and anodic polymerization, to detect metabolites coming from bacteria respiration. Functionalized suture yarns have been used for real-time monitoring of bacteria growth, demonstrating the potential of this strategy to fight against infections. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.