Surgical suture is a medical device used to hold body tissues together after injury or surgery. Sutures must be strong enough to hold tissue securely but flexible enough to be knotted. They must be hypoallergenic and avoid the "wick effect" that would allow fluids and thus infection to penetrate the body along the the suture tract.
Through many millennia, various suture materials were used, debated, and remained largely unchanged. Needles were ma...
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Surgical suture is a medical device used to hold body tissues together after injury or surgery. Sutures must be strong enough to hold tissue securely but flexible enough to be knotted. They must be hypoallergenic and avoid the "wick effect" that would allow fluids and thus infection to penetrate the body along the the suture tract.
Through many millennia, various suture materials were used, debated, and remained largely unchanged. Needles were made of bone or metals such as silver, copper, and aluminum bronze wire. Sutures were made of plant materials (flax, hemp and cotton) or animal material (hair, tendons, arteries, muscle strips and nerves, silk, catgut). African cultures used thorns, and others used ant sutures by coaxing insects to bite wound edges with their jaws and subsequently twisting off the insects' heads.
The earliest reports of surgical suture date back to 3000 BC in ancient Egypt, and the oldest known suture is in a mummy from 1100 BC. The first detailed description of...
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