Toxicologic Pathology Forum Opinion Paper: Considerations for Toxicologic Pathologists Evaluating the Safety of Biomaterials and Finished Medical Devices

Safety (“biocompatibility”) assessment of medical devices has evolved along a different path than that of drugs, being historically governed more by the considerations and needs of engineers rather than chemists and biologists. As a result, the involvement of veterinary pathologists has been much more limited—almost entirely to evaluating tissue responses in tissues in direct contact with implanted devices. As devices have become more complex in composition, structure, placement, and use, concerns as to adverse systemic responses in patients have called for more comprehensive and thoughtful evaluations of effects throughout the body. Further complexities arise from the increasing marriage of devices and drug/biologic therapeutics to achieve either better dose control and, specifically, in delivery to target organs/tissues or better tolerance of the body to medical devices (i.e., minimization of the foreign body response). The challenge to pathologists is to integrate in new technologies (such as in vivo imaging and immunology) and ways of viewing interactions with patient bodies. To fail to do so will allow the methods and standards for medical device safety evaluation to be based on chemical analysis and then the limited details inherent in literature-based risk assessments