The effect of annealing treatments on the tensile properties and hydrolytic degradative properties of polyglycolic acid sutures.

The purpose of this research was to examine the effect of annealing treatments on the mechanical properties of polyglycolic acid sutures, and their subsequent influence on PGA degradation properties. An attempt was made to develop a better understanding of the degradation mechanism of synthetic absorbable sutures, including the relationship of their structure, morphology, and mechanical properties. PGA sutures were annealed under selected axial strain (freely hung, 0%, 1%, 10%), at four temperatures (150 degrees C, 170 degrees C, 180 degrees C, 190 degrees C), and two times (5 and 20 min). The annealed PGA specimens were then subjected to hydrolysis in phosphate-buffer solutions (pH = 7.4) for up to 28 days at 37 degrees C. Tensile properties were used to evaluate the effect of annealing treatments. The data were subjected to statistical analysis using the SAS system. All of the one-, and many of the two- and three-factor interactions were found to be statistically significant. Annealing treatments did alter the mechanical properties of PGA sutures, as well as their degradation properties. Except for the increase in tenacity of samples with increasing percent extension, all other respects of the annealing treatments resulted in lower tenacity and breaking elongation when compared with the control samples. Sutures that have been exposed to any level of axial tension during annealing, however, exhibited a lower rate of hydrolytic degradation than the freely hung suture samples. The reduction of the characteristics of fiber structure due to the tendency of the tie-chain molecules to acquire the less constrained conformations and thus to bring the crystal blocks they connect back to the original arrangement before drawing is believed to be responsible for the freely hung specimens to behave quite differently from the clamped and stressed PGA samples.