Medical polyurethane tapes

Polyurethane is an excellent material for medical applications. When used as a backing material for wound dressings, Polyurethane tape provides a bacterial and fluid barrier as well as transmitting moisture thus helping to prevent infection whilst enabling long wear time. Polyurethane medical tapes have many other uses – including ostomy devices, fixing monitoring devices and tubes to the skin, and cosmetic applications.

3M Medical OEM’s new range of PUs have high moisture vapour transmission rates (MVTR) that let the skin breath while the dressing remains waterproof, allowing the patient to shower without fear of contamination. The material’s conformability and flexibility allow it to be applied over awkward areas and 3M’s advanced adhesive technology allows the patient to wear the dressing for up to seven days, reducing the number of re-applications, reducing discomfort and cost. All of 3M’s PU films can be sterilised by EtO or Gamma.

3M’s transparent PU technology has been used by healthcare providers worldwide for many years. Now it’s available in pink, tan and blue colours, for more design applications. It can be supplied with a white paper carrier, or if transparency is required, with a transparent plastic carrier. These exciting new materials provide greater flexibility for medical product designers whilst providing benefits to patients.

Parafix’s automated multi-stage, die-cutting and island placement capabilities allow 3M’s PU tapes to be applied over foams, hydrogels and gauzes to produce dressings or plasters. PU tapes can also be used in complex, multi-layer device fixation or protection products. Parafix’s development team can help with initial design, prototyping trials and volume production, which takes place in our recently extended ISO 14644 class 7 clean room environment to IS0 13485 quality and management standards.