Investigation of using thermochromic PEGDA hydrogels for peripheral vein imaging

Medical applications and tests used in the healthcare field generally includes; drawing a small amount of blood to be analyzed, or liquid injection to the patient. Peripheral venous access is one of the most basic attempts that are applied by health professionals. Applications such as blood collection, injection or inserting a catheter through the skin are referred to as invasive techniques. The most common problem in invasive techniques is finding vascular lines. Especially in small children, obese and patients who received intravenous chemotherapy, it is difficult to feel and see the vascular lines and this makes invasive applications very difficult. The difficulty of finding vascular lines in babies and small children causes stress and repression on health professionals. Therefore a simple, effective, fast and efficient method is required to determine the location of the peripheral veins. The aim of this study is based on spraying temperature-sensitive colorants incorporated polymer solution on the outside of the skin and displaying the main vascular lines so that invasive applications can be applied easily. For this purpose, for the invasive applications which are frequently used by health care workers in daily life, a cheap, portable and easy to use vein imaging spray is produced. In this study, thermochromic ink and different mixtures of different molecular weight biocompatible PEGDA polymers are transformed into in situ hydrogels by redox polymerization using hydrogen peroxide, iron (II) gluconate and ascorbic acid. Small amounts of VCL is added to PEGDA hydrogels to decrease the swelling properties. By qualitative observations and reological measurements ideal in situ PEGDA hydrogel is determined and viscoelastic behaviour of all PEGDA hydrogels are compared with this ideal hydrogel.