The analysis of forces needed for the suturing of elliptical skin wounds

There is a lack of information regarding the forces required for suturing human wounds. The knowledge of suturing forces serves as complementary information for setting up the limiting geometry when using tissue adhesives and it might also be used in robot-assisted surgery. The main purpose of this paper was to evaluate the forces required for suturing selected skin wounds. An elliptical wound was chosen for our study. In this study a numerical analysis and in vivo experiments were performed. Regarding the numerical models, the maximum forces occurred in the middle of the elliptical wound in all cases. In the case of highest pre-stress used in these analyses the maximal force varied from 0.5 N for the smallest wound (30 x 5 mm) to 1.5 N for the largest wound (30 x 15 mm). The maximum peak force for the wound with a size of 46 x 13 mm was 3.2 N. The minimum peak force for the wound with a size of 36 x 5 mm was 1.1 N.