Medical textiles as vascular implants and their success to mimic natural arteries

Vascular implants belong to a specialised class of medical textiles. The basic purpose of a vascular implant (graft and stent) is to act as an artificial conduit or substitute for a diseased artery. However, the long-term healing function depends on its ability to mimic the mechanical and biological behaviour of the artery. This requires a thorough understanding of the structure and function of an artery, which can then be translated into a synthetic structure based on the capabilities of the manufacturing method utilised. Common textile manufacturing techniques, such as weaving, knitting, braiding, and electrospinning, are frequently used to design vascular implants for research and commercial purposes for the past decades. However, the ability to match attributes of a vascular substitute to those of a native artery still remains a challenge. The synthetic implants have been found to cause disturbance in biological, biomechanical, and hemodynamic parameters at the implant site, which has been widely attributed to their structural design. In this work, we reviewed the design aspect of textile vascular implants and compared them to the structure of a natural artery as a basis for assessing the level of success as an implant. The outcome of this work is expected to encourage future design strategies for developing improved long lasting vascular implants.