I went to the doc to have an old 2019 era prototype removed. They refused to place a little something I brought with me in the pocket. Put in a suture.
I got home, removed the suture, placed the new thingy, then decided to give these ziptie sutures I had laying around a try.
shave before the procedure if you can. anywhere the adhesive needs to stick, shave it. I did not. I am dumb.
you have to clean the whole area with alcohol really well. Anywhere I did not absolutely scrub down with isopropyl is obvious because the adhesive part does not stick for shit to my skin in those areas.
after placement, if you can’t use both your hands on yourself to pull the two sides closed, you will need a buddy.
pull each ziptie only a few clicks from both sides, then move on to the next and circle back and run through them all again until they are all tight. I only had two, so it was easy.
once things are tight, trim off the excess ziptie pull material… it will only annoy you and catch on shit. in the photo above I’ve already done this. I just trimmed them back to where the adhesive is.
buttress this with a self-adhering wrap. not too tight, but tight enough to keep the adhesive well pressed against your skin. don’t use medical tape as this may backfire and pull the adhesive pads off your skin if you have to change things out or adjust it.
I’m only on day 1 and I find the adhesive irritating… it kind of feels like a mild hot burning sensation. this might be in my head though. we will see how well it sleeps tonight.
I’ve occasionally suffered from skin irritation from band aids, and but most of the time I don’t get any reaction. All with the same box of band aids…
Although the last time that my skin didn’t like the adhesive, I was also having a bit of wound maceration so it was probably that.
I was one of the test subjects for the stapels. I was numbed for the install, so the staples were painless for me. I thought they were great. Held together perfectly, I was able to remove them myself using one hand, didn’t feel any pain. I’ll post a photo of my scar tomorrow since it’s been a while, but its healed great.
I think the only downside to the staples is if you’re not numbed, I’m not sure how painful it would be. Also you can’t really do it yourself, one hand needs to hold the wound closed while the other operates the stapler.
So overall more difficult but no adhesive to irritate your skin (apart from the initial bandage), no worring about it falling off or becoming loose. I imagine its much easier to shower with staples than the adhesive. Also you can leave the staples in until the wound is healed, whereas the adhesive would be limited to the adhesion strength.Though I did opt to keep it covered while I slept, I was concerned about shifting in my sleep and catching the staples on something.
I haven’t tried this style adhesive closing device before, so take the comparison with a grain of salt
it looks like a suture hole got infected… I’m going to try to cut away that small area of adhesive and get some antiseptic ointment in there. I want to try to avoid having to remove it and put a new one on… but I might have to do that in the end. We will see.
I would say this is one potential downside… the adhesive occludes quite a bit, so if you cover some of the wound and it is not allowed to breathe properly, you could be making it nice and cozy for an infection to take root.
I cut away some of the adhesive covering and hit it with straight up isopropyl and I’m going to let it dry out a bit before I apply any ointment and another bandage.
