Manufacture of electrospun porous PLA fiber‐type film coated with CMC and its anti‐adhesion efficiency in white mice

Abstract

The electrospun polylactide (PLA) anti‐adhesion fiber‐type film coated with carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) was manufactured and evaluated for its usability through animal experiments. The PLA anti‐adhesion film developed in this study is an adhesion preventive film of a double composite structure with both hydrophobicity and hydrophilicity. This film has the anti‐adhesion effect due to hydrophobic PLA that do not melt easily in the body and at the same time is easily attached to the surgical site by hydrophilic CMC that reacts easily to body fluids and changes quickly to mucus. In this study, the diameter and the pore diameter of the PLA fiber and thickness of PLA film made by electrospinning was 0.2–0.4, 1–10, and 30–50 μm, respectively. Through observation of surface structure (×5000 magnification), the most suitable concentration of CMC to maintain pores on the PLA film as much as possible is 0.5% wt/vol. The CMC content in the PLA film coated with 0.5% wt/vol of CMC was measured to be 5.41% wt/wt and its tensile strength was about 2.92 times higher than that of the noncoated PLA film with CMC. The porosity of CMC‐coated PLA film (5.41% wt/wt) was found to be 76.4%. In the animal experiment, 20 white mice (10 as a control group and 10 as an experimental group) were used to determine the degree of adhesion prevention. As a result of observing adhesion and anti‐adhesion between the cecum and the peritoneum by performing U‐shaped laparotomy on white mice at the third week after surgery, the incidence of adhesion in the control group was 90%, whereas the experimental group was 20%.