Effect of Pretreatment with Epoxy Compounds on the Mechanical Properties of Bovine Pericardial Bioprosthetic Materials

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Abstract
Early failures of bovine pericardial heart valves are due to leaflet perforation, tearing and calcification. Since glutaraldehyde fixation has been known to produce marked changes in leaflet mechanics and has been linked to development of calcification, bovine pericardium fixed with the four hydrophilic )oxy formulations and their mechanical properties are studied in this paper. 'e measured the thicknesses, shrinkage temperatures, stress relaxations and press-strain curves of bovine pericardiums after different treatments with (1) on-treatment (fresh), (2) glutaraldehyde (GA), (3) epoxy compounds followed by e posttreatment with GA (EP 1#, EP 2#), and (4) epoxy compounds (EP 3# id EP 4#). Results of this study showed that the hydrophilic epoxy compounds e good crosslinking agents. There are no significant differences of shrinkage mperature and ultimate tensile stress among all tissue samples pretreated th GA, EP 1# and EP 2#. However, the stress relaxations of tissue-samples etreated with epoxy compounds followed by the posttreatment with GA (EP and EP 2#) are significantly slower than that pretreated with GA, and the ains at fracture of EP 1# and EP 2# are also significantly larger than that of GA or epoxy compounds. These facts show that the bovine pericardium pretreated with the epoxy compound followed by the posttreatment with GA (EP 1# and EP 2#) possesses greater tenacity and potential durability in dynamic stress.