Evaluation of the haemocompatibility of titanium based biomaterials.

The increased use of metallic biomaterials in contact with blood e.g. for the application as coronary stents leads to the development of new biomaterials. The main requirements for stents are high flexibility, high cold deformability and sufficient mechanical strength (static and dynamic), which can be obtained by strain hardening, radio-opacity and haemocompatibility. In order to investigate the properties of the metallic biomaterials in contact with blood, a comparison of the haemocompatibility of newly developed materials with established materials has been performed. To evaluate haemocompatibility without the influence of the geometry of the material, spherical powders produced by rotating electrode process (REP) were used in a dynamic test system with full human blood under two different stress conditions. The high shear stress simulates the arterial and the low shear stress simulates the venous situation. The use of a dimensionless score point (SP) system where the parameters of the haemocompatibility are determined with and without a material exposition allows an objective comparison of the materials used.