When it comes to the natural materials used for making absorbable sutures, usually two materials are used. One is catgut, and another is collagen. In this guide, we are going to talk about the catgut- a natural material used to make absorbable sutures.
Knowing About Catgut: The Suture Material
The plain catgut is a widely used natural material to make the chromic catgut absorbable suture. This particular material is procured from the submucosa of the intestine of the sheep, or it can also be derived from the serosa of the cattle intestine.
Chromic catgut is nothing but a modification of the plain catgut that is further tanned using chromic salts so that strength can be improved, and dissolution can be delayed.
It is phagocytosis that absorbs the gut. The gut I associated with a marked tissue inflammation that contributes a lot to the healing. Conversely, it has been discovered that tissue inflammation can lead to the breakdown of the catgut at a much faster rate. Plain gut, on the one hand, has an average survival time of 4 days in the oral cavity. On the other hand, the chromic gut can retain its strength for the duration of 2 to 3 weeks. But when in a moist environment like the oral cavity, the gut’s strength is reduced by an average of 25%.
Reconstructing the Absent or Damaged Urthera Using Chromic Catgut:
In case the defect in Urthera is small, and the tissue is pliable enough so that it can achieve a loose, tension-free closure more than a 16-Fr catheter, primary closure is considered by the experts. It has been reported that experts usually consider using absorbable chromic catgut over the longer-acting synthetic absorbable sutures when treating urethral closure because the former one makes urethral instrumentation is relatively less painful.
Natural Materials for Absorbable Sutures:
As mentioned above, both catgut and collagen are the most used natural materials for making absorbable sutures. The catgut and reconstituted collagen share the same biochemical origin that is collagen.
Catgut is procured from the seep or goat intestine. One can find two types of catgut used to make the absorbable sutures- plain catgut and chromic catgut. Both these types of catgut are monofilament types.
Chrome salts 9brown salts) are used to treat chromic, which further slows down the pace of absorption process in the body and thus, the possibility of tissue reaction in the surrounding tissues is minimized.
When it comes to the unique characteristics of the catgut, the tissue structure of the same is uniformly fine-grained, and also, catgut offers high elasticity and tensile strength. The plain catgut can retain the strength for about 7 days once it is contacted with the tissue. On the other hand, chromic catgut has strength retention for about 14 days.
Final Words
The catgut absorbable sutures are always packaged in the alcohol solution so that their flexibility can be retained. In addition to this, the packages are sterilized either by ethylene oxide or Co gamma-irradiation.