医用热熔胶的研究与应用

Hot-melt adhesives for medical applications

BACKGROUND: Hot-melt adhesive is safe and environmental friendly adhesive due to free of solvent, which is particularly suitable for medical applications. OBJECTIVE: To describe the types and characteristics of currently used hot-melt adhesives and to prospect the technical research and development of hot-melt adhesive for polyolefin tubes or catheters as well as to point out the corresponding key points to the hot-melt adhesion. METHODS: Literature search was carried out in SCI, Elsevier, and CNKI with the key words of “hot melt adhesive, medical application” in English and Chinese, respectively, for the initial retrieval of relevant articles or patents published January 1995 to December 2015. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: To date, the medical hot-melt adhesives reported in the literature could be grouped as amorphous polyolefin, thermoplastic elastomer, acrylic and polyurethane types. The heat resistance of the most of the hot-melt adhesives does not meet the requirement for steam sterilizing process. In the present review, a strategy is proposed to develop a novel hot-melt adhesive which is good for binding polyolefin parts and can undergo the sterilization process. Given this, it is essential to choose a kind of polypropylene random copolymer with a suitable melting point as a substrate. With the aid of an adjuvant agent, therefore, we can develop a novel hot-melt adhesive that exhibits a lower melting point than the polyolefin tube, withstands steam sterilization temperature to ensure that the tube is not deformed during melt adhesion and is not become invalid during sterilization.