Continuous or running suture

The continuous or running suture uses one long strand of suture material to close the wound in a sequence of stitches. After the initial knot, the suture is passed repeatedly along the wound without tying each stitch separately. This makes the technique faster than simple interrupted sutures and useful when a wound is long and fairly uniform in depth and tension.

It is commonly used when speed is important and the wound edges are well aligned. The technique distributes tension along the entire suture line, which can be an advantage in some closures. However, if one part of the suture line fails, a larger portion of the closure may be affected compared with interrupted sutures.