With recent technological advances and aging populations, there has been an increased emphasis on implantable biomedical devices with increased useful lifetimes, patient compatibility, and performance. Within this realm, there are many applications for vacuum deposited coatings on active devices which can suffer from the challenges of infection which result in degraded performance of the device, often requiring resection and replacement of the device, and can develop into fatal septic infections. There are also needs for antimicrobial coatings on “simple” or inactive medical devices such as intermedullary nails, fixation screws, stabilizing plates, artificial joints, and others. These suffer from the same challenges from infection and are often more likely sites of infection if the initial wound is from an accident or trauma incident.

In this half-day course, a broad overview of biomedically relevant coatings will be introduced for general groups of antimicrobial coatings. There will be a review of existing coatings and surface treatments for antimicrobial application including outlined common physical characteristics, an introduction to microbial challenges in the medical device area, and detailed descriptions of approaches to evaluate coatings for antimicrobial activity. This course is designed to provide an overview of biomedical coatings for those new to this area of research as well as a “primer” of microbiological approaches and methods for non-biologists.