Pixel International Conferences

Medical research and science progress over the last century made it possible for almost every wound to be treated by specialised doctors. In some cases, humans suffer from wounds inside their body, or they need an operation. In these cases, sections are mostly stitched with special sutures. On our body surface and skin, these sutures need to be removed two weeks after the operation but with healing processes inside the body, it wouldn’t be favourable to reopen a cut and to remove suture material. Therefore, there are different kinds of polymers used for sutures in different locations of our body, depending on environmental conditions and required strength of the stitches. Because they show such a broad variety of characteristics and can be tailored to alter these, polymers as a chemical substance group are a perfect candidate to form different sutures for different applications. Not only can they be formed into threads, strings and filaments and be perfectly handled because of their flexibility. They also show different properties concerning their response to and degradation in acidic or basic environments [1] as well as their degradation behaviour with stimuli like gamma radiation or enzymes [2]. Hence, there are different sutures available for body regions like stomach or intestines compared to regions with physiological pH value. Furthermore, polymers are part of school curricula and their application in surgical suture materials links medical topics to organic chemistry and pH calculations. Thus, this topic presents linkage to everyday problems with great potential for chemistry education and offers motivating learning opportunities, especially for girls and young women [3]. It links school teaching to research findings and connects different scientific areas as well as it helps to develop networked thinking and experimental skill. In this article, we present an experimental approach on how polymer characteristics can be made accessible for K-12 chemistry education and school laboratories through didactic reconstruction. For this purpose, PDS II™, MAXON™, VICRYL™ and PROLENE™ as well-known polymeric sutures are exposed to different acidic and basic environments and examined regarding their degradation behavior in a simplified tensile strength measurement experiment.