What are medical devices that utilize materials of animal origin?
Animal tissues and their derivatives are utilized within medical devices to provide performance characteristics that have been chosen for advantages over non-animal based materials.
The range and quantities of materials of animal origin in medical devices vary. These materials can comprise a major part of the device (e.g. bovine/porcine heart valves, bone substitutes for use in dental or orthopaedic applications, haemostatic devices), can be a product coating or impregnation (e.g. collagen, gelatin, heparin), or can be used in the device manufacturing process (e.g. tallow derivatives such as oleates and stearates, fetal calf serum, enzymes, culture media).
