This is the style of scissors use to take out sutures: http://www.georgetiemann.com/prodimg/highres/105-670.jpg
The hook at the end slips easily underneath the stitch, the other blade cuts the stitch, then one uses a forceps to pull it out.
The device they use to take stitches out of cloth is called, IIRC, a Seam Ripper.
I wouldn’t use it to take stitches out of skin – skin is a lot less resistant to ripping than the sutures, and has lot more nerve endings than cloth.
When I had suture removed, the doctor used teeny little scissors.
Right, this is my point. All my life in the US, I’ve removed or had removed my stitches with scissors, and more often than not, the scissors have to dig into the skin a little. Whereas one time in Taiwan, I was having sutures removed, and the nurse used this little tiny metal hook, and poppoppoppoppop my stitches were out. It was incredible.
I’ve taken them out before. I’ve been having these biopsies done since I was a kid, and started taking the sutures out myself when I was in college. I’m not saying I know everything, and I am as careful as possible.
This is what it was, if I remember correctly. I tried ordering one, but the shipping is almost as much as the item itself. Are there medical supply stores?
If I were you I’d get the single use sterile kits- that way you can dispose of them and don’t have to mess about trying to sterilise blades.
The technique is just to cut on one side of the knot, near the skin, and pull the other side of the knot, near the skin so that you lift the suture out rather than pulling it through the wound.
I have a couple of single use stitch cutters at home that I got from work- irishfella has a lot of moles and usually gets one or two biopsied or removed at each annual dermatologist visit. I reckon that by liberating the supplies from work and taking his stitches out myself I’m saving the NHS money because he doesn’t have to go and see a nurse at his GP’s office to get them out.
Certainly there are, where I live at least. Yellow pages and a few phone calls should establish whether they sell Littauer scissors, which are the proper name of those scissors with the tiny curve on one blade.