Short-term implantable medical devices such as urinary catheters are widely used in hospitals and nursing homes to relieve urinary retention and incontinence.
In these types of medical devices, the most common and life-threatening complication is catheter associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI), which affect over 10 million patients every year with high economic cost and patient suffering. Antimicrobial resistance has made it difficult to treat CAUTI via conventional antibiotics.
With an increasingly ageing population and rising costs to treat CAUTIs, a strong need exists for innovative anti-bacterial catheters that prevent bacterial colonisation on the catheter walls.
In collaboration with Chalmers University of Technology, Amferia has begun ongoing research into enabling our technology as a whole catheter or as coatings to existing catheters. The base technology, amphiphilic antimicrobial hydrogel may be developed into tough silicone-like materials or can be tailored as coatings to silicone surfaces. Both these prospects are being tested today as proof-of-concepts and published in scientific articles.
