Remember there was a period when a clinical fad emerged from somewhere. Some patients were extremely afraid of sutures, insisting before any surgical procedure, big or small, that the doctor must use a good suture—one that can be absorbed by the body. These people were terrified of leaving foreign matter inside their bodies. It's unclear where they heard the rumor that having these sutures left in the body would be deadly.
It's easy to see why this assertion is not feasible. Absorbable sutures were invented later. By this logic, wouldn't previous surgical patients have all been killed by non-absorbable sutures?
In considering which suture to use medically, the first step doctors must consider is certainly not whether the suture can be absorbed by the human body, but the tensile strength of the suture material.
