Composite PVA hydrogels applications in biomedicine: Overview of current developments

Abstract

Nowadays, the poly (vinyl alcohol), PVA, hydrogels appear as promising materials for several biomedical and pharmaceutical applications such as: wound dressing, drug delivery devices, cartilage replacement and scaffolds, among others. Generally, the plain polymer does not fulfill all the needed requirements to these complex and specific uses. Therefore, new strategies have been employed to improve the specific required characteristics; one of them consists of adding fillers to the polymer, thus obtaining compound hydrogels with better properties than normal hydrogels which is the focus of the present work. This chapter contributes to the overall information in the area of compound gels and brings a comprehensive study of the field of materials for biomedical applications.