Steri strip

Steri strips are surgical strips of adhesive backed paper tape that are placed across an incision or minor cut. They keep the edges of a wound together as it heals. The Steri-Strip was invented by the company 3M.

Steri strips may be used instead of sutures (stitches) in some injuries, because they lessen scarring and are easier to care for.

The precursor to the steri-strip, was Micropore Surgical Tape. Reports of dramatic cases where Micropore Surgical tape alone was used to hold large abdominal incisions together when the skin was too fragile to accommodate sutures and another where one patient’s abdominal wall was literally rebuilt with the tape and his life saved when sutures on the patient’s compromised skin failed to hold the wound closed prompted 3M to cut Micropore Surgical Tape into one-eighth inch, one-fourth inch and one-half inch strips, sterilise and package it as primary surface closures for incisions. [1]

They are inappropriate over joints, but useful for areas where skin is thin and sutures are likely to ‘cut out’, to make Steristrips stickier, tincture of benzoin could be applied to the dry skin around the wound.

• Butterfly stitches
• Dressing (medical)
• Surgical suture
• Micropore

• http://intermountainhealthcare.org/xp/public/documents/pcmc/steristrips.pdf *Wounds
• US based wound healing society
• Surgical sutures on Wikisurgery

it:Steri strip

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