Suture clinic

Recently the OB/GYN interest group hosted an extracurricular session to teach M1's to suture and give M2's a chance to practice (and learn a few fancy stitches, like the horizontal mattress). We also had practice gloving and using laparoscopy instruments. And, for those interested in OB/GYN, the older students took out the models of cervical change during labor, for us to see whether we could guess the dilation and effacement. Everything was cool!

We we also had lots of expired suture and we each had a suturing kit and either a pig's foot or a cow tongue. I love suturing, am decent at estimating centimeters, and love the tactile/visual challenge of laparoscopy. I enjoyed it so much that I took a partially-sutured beef tongue home to my freezer. Then, my roommate and I used it to practice! Pictures below the jump are of cow tongue being sutured, so don't explore if you're not intrigued.

My roommate suturing on the posterior tongue, which is least roughened and (maybe?) resembles bowel or peritoneum.

Me, suturing the anterior tongue, which is pigmented with keratinized projections that (I suppose) the cow uses to scrape all that yummy feed/grass into the first of its four stomachs. My roommate also got a chance to suture on the anterior tongue: her closed defect is at 1:00 in this picture. Mine's a lot longer, because I wanted to pretend I was closing after a C-section.

I cut deep to practice closing two layers: muscle and epithelium. I used a running stitch to close the muscle and then practiced horizontal and vertical mattress sutures to evert the skin (not shown). I don't understand the different purposes of all the various stitches, but someday I will. In the meantime, I'll just have fun sewing raw meat at my kitchen table. :) We stuck the tongue back in our freezer, since we still have enough gloves and suture for another session.