Medical devices fabricated from homopolymers and copolymers having recurring carbonate units

Claim 1

A medical device for use within a living animal in contact with the tissue or body fluids of said animal, said device comprising a body having one or more surfaces adapted to contact said tissue, said fluid or a combination of said tissue and said fluid, said surfaces formed totally or in part of one or more biopolymers selected from the group consisting of homopolymers or random copolymers having at least one type of recurring monomeric unit of the following General Structure I or II: ##STR14## wherein: Z is [C(R 5 R 6 )], [NR 5 ], --O-- or a combination thereof, where Z is selected such that there are no adjacent heteroatoms; n is from 1 to about 8; m is from 1 to about 8; R 1 , R 2 , R 3 , and R 4 are the same or different at each occurrence and are hydrogen, aryloxyalkyl, alkyoxyarly, aryloxyarly, arylalkyl, alkylarlyalkyl, arylalkylaryl, alkylaryl, arylcarbonyalkyl, alkyl, aryl, alkylcarbonyalkyl, cycloalkyl, arylcarbonylaryl, alkylcarbonylarly, alkoxyalkyl, or aryl or alkyl substituted with one or more substitutents selected from the group consisting of alkyl, aryl, alkoxy, aryloxy, dialkylamino, diarylamino, and alkylarylamino; and R 5 and R 6 are the same or different and are R 1 , R 2 , R 3 , R 4 , dialkylamino, diarylamino, alkylarylamino, alkoxy, aryloxy, alkanoyl, or arylcarbonyl, or any two of R 1 to R 6 together may form an alkylene chain completing a 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 or 9 membered alicyclic fused, spiro, bicyclic or tricyclic ring system or a combination thereof, which system may optionally include one or more non-adjacent carbonyl, oxa, alkylaza or arylaza groups; with the proviso that when said biopolymers and copolymer having recurring units of the Structure I derived from trimethylene carbonate, the other recurring monomeric units of the copolymer are not derived from glycolide or glycolic acid and with the further proviso that when the said biopolymers are homopolymers having recurring units of the Structure II derived from ethylene carbonate or propylene carbonate then m is other than 1.