Tensile, Knot, and Detaching from Needle Performances of Atraumatic Surgical Sutures

In this study, atraumatic surgical sutures were used to investigate the effects of different structural parameters on tensile properties of unknotted and knotted (one, two, and three) sutures. Besides tensile properties, an important and crucial property namely detaching from needle property of the sutures were examined. Atraumatic surgical sutures having different lifetime in the body (nonabsorbable and absorbable), different raw materials (polypropylene [PP], silk, polydioxanone [PDS], polyglactin 910 [PGA]), different yarn structures (monofilament and braided), and different size numbers (2/0, 3/0, and 4/0 USP) were tested and variance analyses were used to examine the effects of structural parameters on test results. Tensile test results revealed that the presence of knot causes noticeable reduction in the breaking load values. However, the knotted sutures with varying throw number of knots were determined to have similar breaking properties. In addition, breaking load and detaching force from needle decrease with increasing size number of the sutures. In the case of the same size number and the same throw number of knot, absorbable sutures have higher breaking load results than non-absorbable sutures and braided sutures are stronger than monofilament sutures used in the study