| Abstract: | This work studies the adhesion of clinical infecting bacteria, S. aureus and E. coli, on prosthetic polymeric materials. Membranes were prepared from polyethylene terephthalate (PET) blending at various ratios with sodium polyethylene‐5‐sulfoisophthalate (SPES). The membranes were characterized by measuring the contact angle, equilibrium water content, and the surface concentration of sodium sulfonate. The results show that sulfonate makes the membrane more hydrophilic. The surface properties of bacteria were determined by measuring the adhesion to n‐octane (B%) and the contact angles to water and α‐bromonaphthalene. For the four bacteria studied, encapsulated S. aureus was the most hydrophobic and had the highest amount of bacteria attached to the surface of SPES/PET membrane. Furthermore, the attached amount decreased with the increase of the content of SPES. Empirical correlations for predicting the attached amount from the surface properties of both polymer and bacteria were obtained from linear regression. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 91: 3587–3594, 2004 |
