The strength of a suture material is important for a number of reasons, including the ability of the suture to withstand knotting and the imposed stress when used to bring soft tissues into apposition. Sutures of low strength will tend to break during surgery or, more seriously, postsurgery. In the former situation, the surgeon must waste time and effort in resuturing the wound while in the latter case, loss of wound closure and infection may occur.
Surgeons select sutures on the basis of type of material, namely, traumatichontraumatic, insoluble/absorbable, handling characteristics and strength. There have, however, been few studies on the strength of suture materials over the years, these being concerned with the strength of knotted materials. The studies that have been reported have lacked reproducibility, particularly with finer gauge materials. 1-3 This problem is due to the difficulty of adequately securing fine diameter threads, 0.56 mm for 1-gauge sutures and 0.20 mm for 0000-gauge sutures, in a tensile testing machine. Various approaches have been adopted, including gripping the suture material between the jaws of the tensometer using different clamping mechanisms, wrapping them around metal, plastic or rubber rollers, and adhering them to plates or tubes mounted within the tensometer jaws. None of these techniques has been wholly successful and the variability of the derived data is frequently large.4
This communication reports the use of a new mounting regimen for fine gauge materials in the tensile testing of surgical suture materials.