When a surgeon does a microvascular anastomosis, do they use absorbable/dissolving sutures? Or do the sutures that connected the vessels remain there for all time?
Thank you for your response.
At least in ENT, we use nonabsorbable sutures...
typically 8-0 or smaller nylon.
Thank you. So they just stick around there forever then? That doesn't cause any problems/complications?
Anything is possible. It's a foreign body, so it can always get infected. It's intraluminal, so it could always lead to a clot. In the grand scheme of things, the risk is miniscule, and we leave plenty of other things in that don't degrade (intentionally speaking, of course)-- silk sutures or metal clips for vessel ligation, patch grafts on major arteries, artificial hips, just to name a few...
