Knot Properties of Surgical Suture Materials

Abstract

New surgical suture materials with varying knot properties are continuously introduced. A method to measure and describe the knot properties of these different fibres is wanted but, today, no generally accepted method is available. During recent years, however, two different methods, the single strand and the loop technique, have been introduced. In the present report these two methods are compared. It is shown that the values obtained with the loop technique were influenced by other factors than the knot properties of the material while the single strand technique allowed an elective estimation of the knot properties of a fibre.

A Biomechanical Analysis of Suture Materials and Their Influence on a Four-Strand Flexor Tendon Repair

“…19 Stainless steel has advantages over other materials in terms of improved knot-holding ability, requiring only 2 throws, 18 and minimal loss of tensile strength after knotting. 18,19,33 Although the use of stainless steel for flexor tendon repair largely is historical, it did produce the strongest repairs with respect to gap and ultimate forces. Fibrewire, a braided polyethylene-based suture, currently is used for soft-tissue repair in combination with suture anchors.…”

A Comparative Analysis of the Biomechanical Behaviour of Five Flexor Tendon Core Sutures

“…Hence, when calculating the theoretical ultimate breaking strength of the repair, only the core suture is included. Ticron s loses approximately 50% of its maximal tensile strength when knotted (Holmlund, 1974;Trail et al, 1989) and the ultimate strength of knotted 4-0 and 3-0 Ticron s has been measured to be 10.3 and 16.7 N, respectively (Holmlund, 1974;Trail et al, 1989). If the force subjected to the core suture exceeds the breaking strength of the knotted strands, the repair will break by suture rupture.…”

Variability of surgical knot tying techniques: do we need to standardize?

“…Knot and loop security is the main safety issue [34][35][36][37]. In order to establish the safety characteristics of different suture materials and the corresponding knot tying techniques, many authors used technical devices and even electron microscopy [6,7,15,30,[38][39][40].…”