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This Defense Intelligence Reference Document, dated 7 January 2010, was prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency's Defense Warning Office. It is one of a series of advanced technology reports produced in FY 2009 under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications program. The report reviews biomaterials used in medicine, including silicones, Teflon, biodegradable polymers, hydrogels, titanium, ceramics and tissue constructs, and applications such as stents, joints, contact lenses, drug delivery and dialysis. It concludes that most innovation lies in new ways to apply existing materials.
From the source:Release of 2026-09-18 Incident: 1/7/10, Las Vegas, Nevada. Released with redactions. This document is a Defense Intelligence Reference Document (DIRD), a technical reference format used by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to capture baseline knowledge on a specific topic for later analytic use. DIRDs are best understood as reference and synthesis products rather than as original research. It is one of 38 DIRDs produced under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP) between 2009 and 2011. Because AAWSAP’s scope permitted a broad range of supporting topics, not every DIRD in the series directly concerns aerospace systems or future threat assessment. The following summary reflects the DIRD’s scope and framing at the time of writing and should not be read as implying current validation of the concepts discussed. This DIRD is a broad survey of biomaterials, including metals, polymers, ceramics, glasses, and composites designed to interact with living tissue, and argues that their value depends mainly on biocompatibility, reliability, and careful matching of material properties to specific medical uses. The report reviews major application areas including biosensors, implants, cardiovascular devices, contact lenses, drug delivery systems, tissue constructs, titanium devices, and dialysis membranes, emphasizing that no single biomaterial works best in every setting. Its overall conclusion is that biomaterials are already foundational to a large medical-device industry and save or improve millions of lives, but that progress tends to be slow because safety testing is stringent; as a result, most advances come from improved ways of applying established materials such as silicone, Teflon, biodegradable polymers, ceramics, and titanium in new devices and clinical settings rather than from radically new substances.
UNCLASSIFIED/ /FOR OFFICIJ!tt tJ!H! er•tv Another recent discovery is that treating the titanium surface with a silane compound will create a surface chemistry that attracts certain biomaterials known as proteoglycans. From this point, it is possible to lay down layers of collagen on the surface from which connective tissues will form. Titanium metal used for implants is usually a biomedical alloy, Ti-6Al-4V, since biomedical alloys provide good corrosion resistance and reasonable fatigue life and are much stiffer than cortical bone. The Ti-6Al-4V alloy is more suitable than is the Co-Cr alloy for coating with HA because it has less potential proximal stress shielding and bone resorption. BIOMATERIALS IN DIALYSIS Medical therapeutic dialysis, often called hemodialysis, is a method of removing uric acid and other waste products from blood, a necessity when the kidneys fail. It is also useful in removing exogenous poisons like ethanol, aspirin, barbiturates, and boric acid from the blood in cases of poisoning. Hemodialysis accesses the blood stream through the use of two large needles-one in an artery and one in a vein-in order to flow a patient's blood through a series of hair th in, hollow-membrane, tube-like fibers. A dialyzer is composed of thousands of tube-like hollow fiber strands encased in a clear plastic cylinder several inches in diameter. Blood flows on the inside of the membrane fiber, and a dialysate (extraction stream) flows across the outside. Low-molecular weight waste products pass out through the membrane, while blood cells and other large molecules in the blood are retained. Figure 30 shows an illustration (left) and photograph (right) of dialyzers used to treat kidney failure. Blood lnlel Ileader Tube sheet jpiiiilj!!!!!!II• Solution outlet Blood outle Figure 28. Illustration (Left) and Photograph (Right) of a Blood Dialyzer as Used in Medicine UNCLASSIFIED/ /FOA QFFI&I:wk 1481!! er•tY 24
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Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 32 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.