Spiderplasty and Bow-tie Tension Relieving Suture Techniques for Large Skin Defects in Dogs

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Background: In veterinary practice, cutaneous injuries are a very common occurrence. Various methods have been employed to close large skin defects like skin graft or flap often associated with relatively more complex surgical procedures. Use of tension relieving suture techniques like spider plasty and bow tie technique allow the mobilization of adjacent local tissue to cover large cutaneous defects which was thus utilised in the study. Methods: Twelve dogs brought to the Madras Veterinary College Teaching Hospital, Chennai,TANUVAS with large diameter open wounds were selected for the study. Irrespective of the stage of closure the two tension relieving suture techniques, i.e. Spiderplasty and Bow-tie, were performed for closure of the large wounds. The preoperative and postoperative wounds assessment were performed through subjective evaluation, planimetry, bacteriological examination and histopathological evaluation. Result: The Spiderplasty technique was more time consuming, required more surgical expertise and had slightly lower cost efficiency ratio. It could however be better utilised to close wounds located in confined anatomical areas, as compared to the Bow-tie procedure which was limited by its requirement to resect 36% of adjacent normal tissue.