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Motivation:
Polycaprolactone (PCL) degrades naturally in a 2-3 year period. The stents are designed to degrade within the patient as the patient's trachea grows in order to avoid an invasive procedure to remove it. In order to increase the degradation rate of PCL to account for the rapidly growing physiology of pediatric patients, the stents will be pretreated with sodium hydroxide such that the PCL stents will degrade within a 6-12 month time period.
Experimental Design
Treat stents in 5M NaOH solution for various immersion times: 45, 60, and 90 minutes. A fourth control group won't be treated with NaOH. 3 baby and rabbit stents will be treated in each condition, totaling 24 stents treated.
After pretreatment, stents will have excess NaOH washed off using tap water for 30 minutes.
After stents are washed and dried, they are placed in tubes filled with 10mL of phosphate-buffered saline for in vitro degradation. Stents are periodically removed, dried, and massed to measure the degradation.
Results
Structural Integrity of Stents
The old straight seam design demonstrates less structural integrity as it came apart at the seam and formed cracks more easily than the new puzzle seam design
Degradation of Stents Over Time
Based on the change in mass of the stents throughout a 10-week degradation period, there was no statistically significant degradation that occurred in any of the experimental groups. With a longer degradation period, ideally, degradation would be observed around the 30-week mark.
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