Novel Double Lumen Catheter for Drug Delivery at the Skin- Catheter Interface

The current trend in using percutaneous devices in contemporary medicine and the increased dependence on advanced treatments with technologically improved delivery systems will produce a sustained growth in the number of patients undergoing procedures where a skin-implant interface will be present [1-3,12]. Increasingly, these bio interfaces will also become long-term or permanent interfaces. Typical complications originating from the use of these devices are break-down of the skin and serious infections which makes more difficult the formation of a long-term, stable dermal and epidermal sealing around the implants. These devices show high variability in their intrinsic properties, with a disparate number of material composition, surface structure, porosities and topologies [4,13]. Successfully addressing the problems originating at this bio interface will also be helpful to avoid or reduce complications in surgical procedures that require long-term permanent access to internal areas after total implantation [5,6,15].