PVC – Just What the Doctor Ordered

When is shelf liner not shelf liner? When it’s wrapped around a broken limb. At least that’s what orthopedic surgeon John Stanton of Clarksville, Tenn., discovered when he turned that humble PVC product into a cast liner that frees his patients to swim and shower in comfort.The shelf liner has a polyester base, or skrim, with a checkerboard pattern of open and closed squares.

“This is dipped into a bath of foamed-up PVC,” Dr. Stanton said. “The number of dips determines the thickness of the padding.”

Working at home, Dr. Stanton cut the liner into bias strips and connected them into rolls by melting the ends with a heat gun. Today, his patent-pending product is manufactured in ready-to-use 2-inch by 50-inch or 3-inch by 60-inch rolls called WaterPruf cast padding. He is also patenting a version of padding for splints when a limb must be immobilized.

In treating a patient, Dr. Stanton wraps the limb in PVC webbing, then applies the fiberglass cast and allows it to harden. The result is a smooth, foamy liner and a hard outer shell.
“The lining does not hold or attract water. Also, water runs through it. It dries in half an hour,” Dr. Stanton said in describing the advantages of using the PVC cast liner. WaterPruf is less sticky and sweaty than the more expensive lining made of Gore-Tex, which does not let water run through it. Since there is no rubber in WaterPruf, it does not cause latex reactions.

In the 31⁄2 years since he developed the liner, Dr. Stanton has used it on 150 patients – 90 percent on arm injuries. He uses the liner only on fractures that are stable—not swollen—and that do not involve stitches, incisions or pins. The product is especially useful for children’s injuries, such as “greenstick” fractures, he said. Another possible use would be in corrective casting, applied by therapists at children’s hospitals.

WaterPruf is manufactured by Vantage Industries of Atlanta and marketed by DeRoyal Industries of Powell, Tenn. Contact DeRoyal at 800-541-3992 for more information and for a free sample.

Innovative Uses of Vinyl in Healthcare

Vinyl Devices that Prevent Blood Clotting
Blood clotting or coagulation is a dangerous phenomenon that can occur when blood comes into contact with foreign objects like tubing or catheters used in various medical procedures, including open-heart surgery, dialysis and platelet collection. Currently, anti-thrombogenic coatings, like heparin, are used to prevent coagulation in medical devices. But a new technology allows anti-clotting molecules to be incorporated directly into the vinyl used in various tubing, catheters, extracorporeal circuits and other devices. This technology, which can only be applied to vinyl, increases the reliability of medical products and enhances the safety of a number of critical life-saving procedures.

Critical Recovery Unit Relies on Vinyl
According to medical research, bone marrow transplant (BMT) units are critical to the recovery of patients. A typical hospital stay after a bone marrow transplant is from four to six weeks, during which time a patient is isolated and under strict monitoring because transplanted healthy bone marrow cells tend to attack a patient’s cells as though they were foreign organisms, leaving the patient vulnerable to infection. Their recovery environment, therefore, must be extremely clean and sterile.

The Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center in Phoenix, AZ houses a 4,045 square foot bone marrow transplant (BMT) unit that uses vinyl on flooring and wallcovering to provide optimum hygiene and sterility. Vinyl is resistant to harboring pathogens, and is easy to clean and disinfect. The architects who designed this BMT unit also chose vinyl because of its aesthetic appeal – vinyl can take on the appearance of almost any color and display intricate woven designs. Thus, vinyl’s aesthetics and cleanliness provide an optimum healing environment.

Artificial Liver Depends on Vinyl
Vinyl is a critical material being used in the development of the world’s first artificial liver. Like kidney dialysis, the tubing used in the artificial liver is made from vinyl because of its durability, ease of solvent bonding (creating material bridges without reliance on glues), consistency and uniformity of extrusion diameters, adaptability of durometer (hardness) by varying the amounts of the plasticizer used to soften the vinyl, and clarity. Without vinyl, the development of an artificial liver would not be feasible.