Four days ago I had something very unpleasant done to me. I’m not going to say what it is, because I have a certain phobia, but let’s just say I had four things removed that involve wisdom. The next day I was eating painkillers for breakfast and throwing up everything else, clutching ice packs to my face and looking like Robert Zidar from “Soultaker” (MST3K). I haven’t left the house since. But enough of that.
I got some new kind of stitches, they dissolve on their own. Pardon me, but I think this is a marvelous wonderful ingenious invention and I wonder why it wasn’t invented earlier. The last time I got stitches was when a weight machine broke and part of it fell on my head in Gallup NM. I wound up in the Native American hospital with blue stitches in my head, which fell out with a clump of hair in the grand canyon weeks later. I believe these new stitches are astounding. Why couldn’t they have been around then?
Sing the praises of dissolving stitches!
Mine didn’t dissolve. They just bided their time under my skin, until my skin finally had enough. I was sitting there, and I felt a funky spot on my chin. (I had a mole removed.) I went to the bathroom, and it looked like a piece of dead skin. I used the very tips of my fingernails to grasp it, and ended up pulling a good inch of string out of my face. This was almost a month after my surgery. Two days later, I ended up doing the same thing on the other side of the scar.
So I say PTOOEY! But I hope your work out for you!
PTOOEY! Ditto, literally. Years ago, I had a nasty dental procedure done. Dissolving stitches were used. The stitches were coming apart before I made it home. Not untying, falling out in pieces.
I’ve heard that doctors don’t always like using them on skin (especially bigger wounds) because their rate of dissolving depends on a lot of factors (moist environment, probably metabolism, etc) and they may come out too soon for some big wounds.
Dissolving sutures have been around a long time – at least since the 1973 episode of Columbo called “A Stitch In Crime”, in which Leonard Nimoy uses them to commit a murder.
As mentioned above, they are not suitable for all situations.
When I was a teenager lo’ these many years ago, I ripped my elbow open doing something pretty stupid. I got 10 stiches, with some of them on the surface of the wound and some down inside (yes, it was that deep!). I think it was something like 8 on the surface and 2 on the inside (I can’t remember the exact numbers because my best friend got a 10-stich wound at around the same time, only his was very close to the groinal region). The outside stiches were the normal kind and had to be pulled, but the inside ones dissolved. Huzzah!
Ahh, good times, good times.
The last time I had surgery they put me together with a staple gun! Then a week or two later a cute little med student with a pair of pliers RIPPED THEM OUT!
Dissolving (or absorbable, as they’re technically called) sutures are old, old stuff. If you’ve ever had surgery or a wound deep enough to require two layers of stitches, you’ve had absorbable sutures. There are some exceptions, but for the most part only the top layer of skin is ever closed with non-absorbable materials.
Dissolvables have been around forever. They are generally used on “moist” tissue and regular stitches are used on the outer, dry tissue. I’ve had both kinds. Plus, when I got my tubes tied, they didn’t even stitch me. They just put a little piece of tape over the incision. Cool!
You do not want to know where I’ve had dissolving stitches … watching them degrade slowly and either dissolve or come out in raggy bits was not a fun thing. But they did the job.
But I hope your work out for you!