Surgical Sutures: An overview

Sutures are used to close the cuts caused by injuries or to close the incision due to surgery and other medical procedures like wound approximation. They are commonly used on the skin, internal tissues, organs and blood vessels. They are available in the form of monofilament, multifilament/braided and pseudo monofilament. A lubricant is applied on the surface of braided suture material to lower the tissue drag and allow better knotability. They are also available in the form of either absorbable or non-absorbable sutures. Absorbable sutures undergo degradation and loss of tensile strength within 60 d whereas, the non-absorbable sutures retain tensile strength for longer than 60 d. The most important characteristics in biodegradation and absorption of absorbable sutures are the strength and mass loss profiles and the biocompatibility of degradation materials. Synthetic absorbable sutures can be degraded by a hydrolytic mechanism via the scission of ester linkages in the polymeric backbone. This review focuses on suture and their classification in terms of suture manufacturing process. Further it is classified based on sutures absorption ability and the origin of raw material.