SUTURE ( from Lat. sutura, seam, from sucre, to sew; connected with Slat. sty, Goth. siu fan, 0110. siuwan, siwan, AS. siwian, Eng. sew). A term employed both in anatomy and surgery. In anatomy it is used to designate the modes of connection between the various bones of the cranium and face. A suture is said to be sernited when it is formed by the union of two edges of bone with projections and indentations (like the edge of a saw) fitting into one another. The corona], sagittal, and lambdoidal sutures (see SKULL) are of this kind. A suture is termed squamous when it is formed by the over lapping of the beveled (or scale-like) edges of two contiguous .bones. There are also the har moniu and schindylesis sutures, the former being the simple apposition of rough bony surfaces, and the latter being the reception of one bone into a fissure of another. See JOINT. • In surgery the word suture is employed to designate various modes of sewing up wounds.
The term is also applied to a single stitch. Two main varieties of suture are recognized, the con tinuous and the interrupted suture, and from these two a great number of modifications have been made, of which the quill suture, button suture, the glover's suture. the quilt suture, and the intestinal sutures of Lembert and Duypuy tren are examples. A buried suture is one which unites some deeper structure, such as a muscle or a layer of fascia, and which does not appear above the skin. It is often made of some ab sorbable material. Many materials are at pres ent employed for sutures, such as silk, catgut, silkworm-gut, horse-hair, animal-tendon, and silver wire. Consult McGrath, Surgical Anat omy and Operative Surgery (Philadelphia, 1902).