Worldwide oxygenators are used in surgical interventions during which the heart-lung function is interrupted, e.g. for cardiovascular bypass, heart valve replacement or when repairing congestive heart failure. At the very core of these devices are membranes which separate the patient's blood from gases and which allow oxygen to enter and carbon dioxide to leave the blood. The present article briefly reviews the development of available membranes and describes key features of both the production via the unique Accurel^® process and the mode of operation of the worldwide preferred oxygenation membrane OXYPHAN^®.

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Membrane for oxygenator is mainly porous hollow fiber. Dense membrane has no plasma leak and low permeablity, low strength and high cost. On the hand, porous membrane has high permeablity, low cost and plasma leak. A new thin membrane issilicone-coated porous hollow fiber. This membrane has advantages of dense and porous membranes, and high permeablity, no plasma leak and low cost. A membrane oxygenator should be designed to enhance gas transfer performance so that blood flows outside hollow fibers.

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A membrane Oxygenator is widely used for open heart surgery. The function of the Oxygenator is to remove carbon dioxide from the venous blood and replace it with oxygen to maintain the metabolism of the patient.
This review focuses on the mechanism of gas exchange and surface modifications of material for the membrane Oxygenator. Regarding the surface modifications, the biocompatibility of hepar in coated membrane and newly developed polymer coated membrane is introduced.

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MENOX^® has some excellent characteristics which are (1) small priming volume, (2) high resistance for plasma leakage. With the recent progress in cardiopulmonary treatment methods and new applications, improving the gas-exchange performances of MENOX^® became essential. We attempted these improvements maintaning the other excellent performances of MENOX^®.

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The pervaporation technique for hydrophilic volatile organic compounds through a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) membrane was used for the analysis of hydrophilic volatile organic compounds. The permeated vapor was then introduced into the gas chromatograph mass spectrometer (GC-MS). The calibration curves for most of the compounds became straight lines with good sensitivity at a high operating temperature, i. e., 60°C.

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We have developed a Multi-Layered Hollow Fiber Membrane, MHF which has a unique structure and good gas permeability. The thin intermediate layer of the MHF is of non-porous structure and permeable to gas and impermeable to liquid. The outside and inside support layers of the MHF are made of polyolefin with a porous structure which has a porosity of about 40vol%. This membrane is useful for artificial lung and also deaerator to remove dissolved gas in the semiconductor pure water, developer and industrial alcohol.

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