Re-sterilising unused suture material?

RE: Re-sterilising unused suture material?

James Colver Cert. Ed, RVN — Fri, 24 Nov 2017 08:17:41 GMT

Yep - synthetic sutures are broken down in the body by hydrolysis so putting them in an autoclave would not be a good idea!

RE: Re-sterilising unused suture material?

Alison Clare Hickman — Thu, 23 Nov 2017 15:06:18 GMT

I know Nick Shackleton has already answered but I thought I'd give him a 'seconded' answer. Steam would surely begin to degrade the tensile strength.

The only re-sterilised suture material I have ever thought safe to use was that I had put through an Ethylene Oxide sterilisation as we had a machine on-site. A dry sterilisation process.

Ali h

RE: Re-sterilising unused suture material?

Nick Shackleton — Thu, 23 Nov 2017 14:04:18 GMT

I would of thought no. Generally suture material is sterilised using gamma radiation or ethylene Oxide. I believe that if you were to attempted to sterilise suture material it would ‘wick up’ the steam from the autoclave