Applications of synthetic polymers in clinical medicine

Multiple biological, synthetic and hybrid polymers are used for multiple medical applications. A wide range of different polymers is available, and they have further the advantage to be tunable in physical, chemical and biological properties in a wide range to match the requirements of specific applications. This review gives a brief overview about the introduction and developments of polymers in medicine in general, addressing first stable polymers, then polymers with degradability as a first biological function, followed by various other functional and responsive polymers. It is shown up that biomedical polymers comprise not only bulk materials, but also coatings and pharmaceutical nano-carriers for drugs. There is subsequently an overview of the most frequently used polymer classes. The main body of the review then is structured according to the medical applications, where key requirements of the applications and the currently used polymer solutions are indicated.