Antimicrobial polymers for anti-biofilm medical devices: state-of-art and perspectives.

The field of antimicrobial polymers has increasingly grown over the past 10 years, and is expected to have a further rapid expansion in the next few years. The application of these polymers to medical devices has been shown to significantly contribute to the reduction of development of biofilm-based related infections. Antimicrobial polymers can be roughly divided in two classes: antimicrobial agent-releasing polymers and biocidal polymers. Many different antimicrobial agent-releasing medical devices have been so far evaluated in clinical trials and are commercially available. Biocidal polymers, which possess intrinsic antimicrobial properties, represent a new generation of antimicrobial polymers and offer promise for enhancing the efficacy of existing antimicrobial agents, increasing antimicrobial durability and reducing the risk of emergence of resistant pathogens. In this chapter, these two classes of antimicrobial polymers are reviewed and discussed especially in terms of anti-biofilm efficacy.