Polylactic Acid (PLA) is a biodegradable and compostable thermoplastic, derived from renewable resources, looked as an alternative to petroleum-based plastics due to its good processability and performance, lower environmental impact, and sustainable sourcing. The PLA applications have been expanded to a wide range of fields such as packaging, consumer goods, textiles, and agriculture, among others. Biodegradable medical devices are an important field for this biopolymer, mainly due to its combination of biocompatibility, hydrolytic degradation, tailorable performance, and well-established processing technologies. PLA can be processed as scaffolds, sutures, dressings, orthopedic implants, drug delivery devices, tissue engineering, among others. The limitations of PLA (thermal instability, brittleness, low melt strength and elongation at break, hydrophobicity, slow degradation rate, and poor cell affinity) could be improved by different techniques including copolymerization, crosslinking, or blending. It has been largely incorporated into PLA natural polymers (chitosan, collagen, elastin, and hyaluronic acid) and other biopolymer such as PHB, TPU, PGA, and PEG. The selection of blending procedure depends on the physicochemical properties of polymers, miscibility, physical structure, and desired final performance. The in-service properties of PLA and their blends could not be easily predicted due to the interdependence of characteristics (matrix properties, incorporated polymer, processing, and product requirements), and also varied trends have been largely reported. For this reason, the experimental performance of PLA-based blends should be exhaustively investigated to warrant the in-service requirements of biodegradable medical products.
