Catgut suture

This eventual disintegration makes it good for use in rapidly healing tissues and in internal structures that cannot be re-accessed for suture removal.

Catgut suture has excellent handling features, high knot-pull tensile strength, and good knot security.

Catgut suture is made by twisting together strands of purified collagen taken from the serosal or submucosal layer of the small intestine of healthy ruminants (cattle, sheep, goats) or from beef tendon.

This treatment produces roughly twice the stitch-holding time of plain catgut, but greater tissue inflammation occurs.

It is brown rather than straw-colored, and has improved smoothness due to the dry presentation of the thread (plain catgut is wet).

Gut strings were being used in surgery as medical sutures as early as the 3rd century AD as Galen, a prominent Greek physician from the Roman Empire, is known to have used them.