ABSTRACT
This chapter describes medical applications in which polysaccharides function as membrane or have the shape of a sheet. A large variety of biomaterials are used in medicine for separation and storage of blood, infusion of nutrient and drug, surgical operation assistance, body contour repair, reconstruction and replacement of tissues and organs, and controlled drug delivery. Hemodialysis is a therapeutic treatment of chronic renal disease to remove an excess of water and uremic toxins from the patient blood by dialysis under the extracorporeal blood circulation. The cellulose membrane for hemodialysis is regenerated from cuprammonium solution of refined cotton linters with high purity, because the linter cellulose has higher molecular weight than the pulp, leading to higher-tenacity fibers. Both cellulose diacetate and cellulose triacetate are used for hemodialysis. Plasmapheresis is a therapeutic treatment of blood to separate only plasma from the whole blood of a patient through extracorporeal circulation, when the plasma contains pathogenic substances which are mostly high molecular weight proteins.
