Impact of chemical sterilization methods on mechanical properties and bacterial load on homemade fishing line nylon sutures

Abstract

Despite the evolution of suture materials over the past years, nylon fishing line remains a widely used material in the manufacture of sutures for veterinary and human medicine. Its properties in surgery have been shown to be comparable to commercial sutures and represent 20 to 50 times less cost, making them a practical resource in cost reduction strategies, especially for free mass castration services. There is no bibliography available on the impact that sterilization products have on nylon, since they are produced outside the sphere of regulation of regulatory bodies such as ANMAT. In this work we propose to evaluate the physical characteristics and bacterial load of fishing nylon after being subjected to different chemical sterilization methods. All the studies were carried out using 0.3 mm diameter transparent green nylon threads (Nitanyl, Argentina). Four products were selected: ethylene oxide (OE) (BIOLENE, Argentina) and glutaraldehyde (GLU) (Glutaral IQB, Lab. RODRIGUEZ Y VIDAL, Argentina), chloroxylenol 5% soap solution (CX) (Cloroxylenol IQB) and iodopovidone 10% solution (YOD) (Icubex 10, IQB). At different disinfection times (tD), with 0