Reza Saghafi

Antibacterial suture yarns with antibiotic drugs can be applied to protect wounds; so, they can play an important role in preventing and treating the infection. Engineered sutures are expected to have biomechanical properties, i.e. tensile and viscoelastic behavior, for final applications. This research is aimed to consider the tensile and stress-relaxation behavior of drug loaded and raw hybrid suture yarns with the nano size structure from a mixture of PolyVinyl Alcohol/ChitoSan (PVA/CS) and Poly Lactic Acid (PLA); this was assessed using the electrospinning method. After optimizing the condition for the fabrication of structure, the selection of the finest diameter was done Then, the drug loaded PLA-PVA/CS nanofiber (PLA/TCH-PVA/CS) with the optimum condition was produced and tetracycline hydrochloride (5% wt) was loaded in the PLA solution; after that, both samples were twisted for manufacturing the suture yarns. FTIR and contact angle analysis were then conducted to characterize the samples. Following that, the tensile and stress relaxation of both samples were tested and simulated by the linear standard solid model, considering the mechanical characteristics of the requested suture. As a general conclusion, the experimental tensile results showed that with loading the drug, stress at 0.3 min and initial curve slopes in the tensile tests were reduced; however, the absolute initial discharge curve slopes values in stress relaxation results were also raised by loading the drug.