Medical Textiles: How Textile Topography Can Influence Cell Behaviour

Objective: In recent decades, textile material has been successfully used in various medical applications such as suture yarn, vascular graft, stent graft, and hernia mesh.1 More recently, it has been shown that textile material could be considered to replace heart valves. In this latest application, any foreign body reaction (FBR) once the textile is implanted in vivo is a critical issue.2,3 The FBR consists of fibrotic tissue ingrowth, which tends to stiffen the initially porous material, impeding movement of the valve leaflets.