Wednesday, June 1, 2005

The Chopstick Surgical Closure Technique

Filed under: Medgadget Exclusive , Surgery

The standard way to close an uncomplicated surgical wound is either with subcuticular stitch (under the skin "dissolvable" suture), with regular stitch or with staples. Stapling typically involves two people: a surgeon, who uses Adson's forceps to approximate the opposing skin edges, and a person operating the stapling gun.

Medgadget is pleased to present a one-person stapling technique, in which two Adson's forceps are held and operated in one hand like chopsticks, and the other hand is used to operate the stapler.

We believe that this method of closing a surgical wound has never been described in medical literature before. In addition, we believe that it is the first time a new surgical technique is illustrated in a blog (unless this doc did something earlier.)

The "chopstick" method has been developed by John Crew, M.D., a California surgeon and is here demonstrated by Naoum Baladi, M.D., a San Francisco-based cardiac surgeon.

Peer reviews are accepted in our comments section.

                (3)