The medical and healthcare industry has stringent requirements for material safety and compatibility. After special treatment, silicone oil exhibits excellent biocompatibility, chemical stability, and safety, making it a critical material in medical consumables and pharmaceutical formulations to ensure effective treatments and patient safety.
Silicone oil’s biocompatibility and lubricating properties are key advantages in medical consumables. Medical-grade purified silicone oil is non-irritating, non-toxic, and highly compatible with human tissues, making it ideal for coating materials like urinary catheters, artificial lenses, and medical gloves. The coating makes the surface smooth, reducing friction with human tissues and minimizing damage during insertion or removal, while also reducing bacterial adhesion, thus lowering the risk of infection. For example, the incidence of urinary tract infections for uncoated catheters is around 35%, but with a silicone oil coating, it can drop to below 8%, improving patient comfort and safety.
In pharmaceutical formulations, silicone oil’s solubility, stability, and controlled release properties offer unique value. Many lipophilic drugs are poorly soluble in water, leading to low bioavailability, but silicone oil can act as a solubilizer to form stable complexes with drug molecules, improving solubility and absorption efficiency. Its exceptional chemical stability makes it an ideal stabilizer, protecting active pharmaceutical ingredients from oxidation and degradation, extending shelf life and storage stability.
In controlled-release formulations, silicone oil plays a crucial role as a release carrier. It can create a controlled-release system, adjusting the viscosity and concentration to regulate the drug release rate, ensuring stable blood drug concentration and avoiding side effects for long-term medication. For example, adding silicone oil to topical ointments improves skin penetration and stability of the drug. In some oral controlled-release capsules, silicone oil as the release matrix allows the drug to be slowly released, reducing the number of doses per day from 3 to 1, improving patient adherence. Additionally, silicone oil used in ophthalmic surgery can fill the vitreous cavity and support the retina, with optical transparency not affecting post-surgery vision checks.
