Design and validation of hemostatic surgical sutures

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Sutures are used by your doctor to close wounds to your skin or other tissues. Despite the extensive use, existing sutures are not perfect. For instance, it is difficult to achieve a perfect seal because small gaps often present at the suture roots, causing bleeding, leakage, and in some cases, infection. To develop better surgical sutures, this project is focused on the development of novel surgical sutures, called hemostatic sutures, which can actively promote blood clotting at the suture sites. By doing so, the sutures are anticipated to mitigate the bleeding during suturing, enable safer and faster surgery, and ultimately promote healing. Such materials would impact general surgical procedures, particularly cardiovascular surgery. This project will support an interdisciplinary team with expertise in materials, bioengineering and surgery. The team will extend the technologies recently developed with the FRQNT Team grant to developing the new hemostatic sutures. The economic benefits of this project could be substantial. The global market of suture materials is $6 billion USD and there are 485,000 inpatient surgeries in Canada alone. With extended scope with the project, the FRQNT grant could bring impacts in the areas of hemorrhage control and cardiovascular surgery, both of which affect millions of patients and face critical clinical needs of better surgical technologies.