Remember my post on pain? Haha… Felt really guilty about it… so…
Here goes… Looks a bit gross…
And my handiwork looks even worse! Hope to do better the next time round! The sub-cuticulars look… erm, can’t really see them anyway, but the vertical mattressess are far too loose and out of alignment and just disgusting…
Got hand cramp from gripping the needle… Cuz I don’t have one of those needle holders, so I had to make do with forceps. Ouch.
Just a little bit of info about mattress sutures…
- they promote wound edge eversion and less prominent scarring
thus very useful at body sites where the wound edges tend to invert, such as posterior neck (yeah I saw during derm!) or wounds on a concave surface!
- they allow wound edges to be closed under tension when they have to be brought over thru a distance
- use the ‘far-far, near-near’ method (8mm, 4mm respectively) or vice versa… you can see how far OUT I am… (makes it easier if you undermine the wound edges a bit first…)
- have to be really careful that they are symmetrically placed or one edge might become higher than the other -> shelf -> poor cosmesis! EEEK!
- STO’s a bit earlier at 4-6d, and you get really cute markings…
For more info, chk this out!
There’s step by step instruction on how to do the stitches.
