A BIODEGRADABLE MATERIAL FOR ACL RECONSTRUCTION

Biodegradable polyurethane urea fibers for ACL reconstruction have bee n produced by wet spinning. By using a short-chain polyester diol as t he soft segment in the polyurethane urea the elongation-to-break of th e fibers have been reduced to be below 100% instead of 400-800% for sp andex fibers, the modulus is increased from 5 MPa to 1 GPa and the ten sile strength is increased from 0.1 N/tex to 0.4 N/tex. The compositio n of the polyester determines at which rate the fiber degrade. Differe nt polyesters have been investigated to find the most suitable degrada tion rate for ACL application.