Biomedical Device Infections

Implant infections have emerged as a compelling cause of failure associated with tissue-contacting biomedical devices. All such devices are susceptible to infection. Among them are hip and knee prostheses, heart valves, pacemakers, cochlear implants, shunts, surgical mesh, sutures, as well as next-generation tissue-engineering constructs, among many others. Implant infections occur when microbes colonize a device surface and develop into a biofilm. Because biofilms are highly resistant to antibiotics, implant infections are extremely difficult to eliminate. They are often resolved only by removing the device, eliminating the remaining tissue-based infection, and then re-implanting a new device as part of one or more subsequent revision surgeries. The consequences can be significant. In the case of a prosthetic joint infection, for example, the revision process can take many months and many tens of thousands of dollars, and the complications can spiral into compromised life styles and, in some cases, death. The CDC estimates that the annual cost of healthcare-acquired infections - the great majority of which involve some form of tissue-contacting device - is approximately $30-$40B in the United States alone. Solving implant infections requires a convergent interdisciplinary state-of-the-art approaches from Biology, Biochemistry, Chemistry and multiple fields of Engineering, This course is intended for students who want to learn about problems associated with medical-device-associated infection and identify an impactful set of steps which can be pursued to create a trajectory that increasingly pushes its rate of occurrence towards zero over the coming decade and beyond. All information provided in this course is non-confidential.