Learn How to Repair Lacerations the Simple and Easy Way

Learn to Put in Stitches in Less Than 7 Minutes 

Commonly known as “putting in stitches,” suturing is not complicated. And if you choose to use a straight needle – it’s even simpler. In this post we’ll show you how to repair lacerations the simple and easy way. Best of all, our technique requires almost no equipment and takes only minutes to learn and perform!

Here’s a video on the technique:

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Surgical suturing needles come in many confusing sizes and configurations. Most needles are curved into a half-circle, but the type we’ll be using here are straight and flat at the end. These are handy because unlike curved needles, you need to carry nothing other than the package of suture itself.



Suture is rated in much the same way as fishing line. Though instead of “pound-test,” a numbering system of zeros “0” is used. The more 0’s, the smaller diameter of the material. Most useful are sizes between 2-0 and 5-0. If you can only get one size buy 2-0 or 3-0. It’s better to use a heavier material than you need, than selecting a smaller size that might break.



Suture material is the “string” that comes attached to the needle in the package, and it can be divided into two types: absorbable and non-absorbable. Preppers often find non-absorbable materials easier to use and more robust. Absorbables are designed for internal use, as with appendectomies or hernia repairs. They can be used to repair skin cuts, but may cause the wound edges to turn red. This can be problematic because the resulting skin discoloration can be mistaken for an infection.

The most common and perhaps most useful suture is silk. It’s cheap and easy to tie with an old fashion square knot. Tie three or four times, cut off the excessive string, and move on to the next one. 

After watching our video you’ll be good to go. Additional straight needle suturing techniques can be found on The Prepper Pages YouTube channel for those interested.

-ThePrepperPages.com

Learn How to Control Bleeding With a Battery Cautery Unit in 45 Seconds!

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Sutures or Superglue? What Can You Really Get Away With?

Can Superglue Really Replace Sutures? Give Us Two Minutes and We'll Settle the Question!

Topics in Survival Medicine

Our Series on Building Perfect Medical Kits

Rarely does something useful emerge from war. But in the case of superglue... it did.

Our story begins with those airborne cowboys of WWII. You know the ones. Barely out of high school and still thin enough to squeeze into the cockpit of a flying sports car. Their planes going by names like "Marine Corsair" and "P-51 Mustang," these pilots signed up for a crash course in adulthood. Along the way, they quite literally embodied their experiences, and later carried them into their civilian lives.

Found By Mistake

During WW II, pilots often had broken shards of their clear acrylic canopy implant in their arms and face. This shrapnel was produced when bullets tore through their Plexiglas-like cockpits. In time, most flyers completely forgot about these foreign bodies. The pieces of embedded acrylic never seemed to cause problems, so they went unnoticed, and were almost never removed.

It Was All a Lucky Accident

Years later during routine physicals and imaging studies (X-rays), physicians at the Veterans Administration noticed the fragments, and noted they weren't dissolving or festering out. This was unusual. It seemed the body wasn't reacting to them at all.

The finding paved the way for using acrylic based adhesives to close small and medium sized wounds. Reasoning that if solid acrylics weren't causing an immune response, perhaps its liquid form wouldn't either. They were correct, and the rest is history.

Dermabond is ‎2-Octyl cyanoacrylate - Superglue is Ethyl cyanoacrylate

Superglue is very similar in molecular structure to surgical adhesives, and you can use it as an alternative to suturing. If the wound you're closing has minimal tension on the edges when you pinch them together, and you can keep the superglue from filling in the would with a blob of glue, then it can be used in place of stitches - almost regardless of the wounds length.

The trick to remember is to keep the superglue topical, and don't use any adhesive if the wound edges don't come together easily. In that instance, superglue or Dermabond is unlikely to hold, and sutures will be necessary to prevent the laceration from pulling apart later.

Maybe that was longer than two minutes, but we hope you found it useful. Sutures are not always needed. Often you can get by with Dermabond or superglue. Dermabond is available on the web, and its applicator is easy to use. Superglue can be found almost anywhere, though its thin nozzle can make it difficult to apply.

-ThePrepperPages.comPlease Visit ThePrepperPages.com

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