Suturing Reptile Skin

From Episode 182 in the Surgery Feed with Dr Doug Mader

Ok, so you’re not going to suture reptilian skin every day, but one day someone is going to bring you their python, dragon, or whatever scaly creature they love, with a big old wound on it, and you’re going to have to stitch it. And you’re going to stuff it up… unless you read this:

• Reptile skin is covered with some kind of keratin. (Duh.) Also…

• When reptile skin is healing, it tends to invert.

• If you suture a wound in a reptile all pretty with edges perfectly aligned, like you would in a mammal, as the skin inverts, you’ll be left with the fresh margins that you want to heal onto each other being separated by a layer of keratin touching keratin. That’s not going to work.

• So, when you suture any kind of wound on a reptile, do it with an everting horizontal mattress pattern that pulls dermis to dermis, as opposed to keratin to keratin.

• (Oh, and warn the owners that it will look like a six-year-old sutured the wound, with a big ugly ‘keel’ of skin. That will go away after a few moults, leaving the beloved herp with just a tiny little scar.)

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