Design and validation of hemostatic surgical sutures

缝合线是医生用来缝合皮肤或其他组织的伤口。尽管应用广泛，但现有的缝线并不完美。例如，很难实现完美的密封，因为缝合根部经常存在小缝隙，导致出血、渗漏，在某些情况下还会感染。 为了开发更好的手术缝线，该项目专注于开发新型手术缝线，称为止血缝线，它可以积极促进缝合部位的血液凝结。通过这样做，缝合有望减少缝合过程中的出血，使手术更安全、更快，并最终促进愈合。这种材料会影响普通外科手术，特别是心血管外科手术。该项目将支持一个具有材料、生物工程和外科专业知识的跨学科团队。该团队将把最近与FRQNT团队一起开发的技术扩展到开发新的止血缝合线。 这个项目的经济效益可能是巨大的。缝合材料的全球市场价值为60亿美元，仅在加拿大就有485,000例住院手术。随着该项目范围的扩大，FRQNT赠款可能会在出血控制和心血管外科领域带来影响，这两个领域都影响到数百万患者，并面临着对更好的外科技术的关键临床需求。

Sutures are used by your doctor to close wounds to your skin or other tissues. Despite the extensive use, existing sutures are not perfect. For instance, it is difficult to achieve a perfect seal because small gaps often present at the suture roots, causing bleeding, leakage, and in some cases, infection. To develop better surgical sutures, this project is focused on the development of novel surgical sutures, called hemostatic sutures, which can actively promote blood clotting at the suture sites. By doing so, the sutures are anticipated to mitigate the bleeding during suturing, enable safer and faster surgery, and ultimately promote healing. Such materials would impact general surgical procedures, particularly cardiovascular surgery. This project will support an interdisciplinary team with expertise in materials, bioengineering and surgery. The team will extend the technologies recently developed with the FRQNT Team grant to developing the new hemostatic sutures. The economic benefits of this project could be substantial. The global market of suture materials is $6 billion USD and there are 485,000 inpatient surgeries in Canada alone. With extended scope with the project, the FRQNT grant could bring impacts in the areas of hemorrhage control and cardiovascular surgery, both of which affect millions of patients and face critical clinical needs of better surgical technologies.