Sutures are available in a variety of materials, shapes and sizes. One such shape is a “flat” suture, where a plurality of fibers are braided such that the resulting suture is significantly wider than it is tall, resulting in a flat, or planar shape. Such sutures can be useful, for example, in increasing the contact surface area between the suture and the underlying soft tissue to help increase the contact footprint of the soft tissue against the underlying bone. This is particularly useful in, for example, rotator cuff repairs where a “suture bridge” is formed over the upper surface of the cuff to compress the cuff tissue to the underlying bone. Another advantage of such flat sutures is that the larger surface area distributes forces exerted on the tissue by the suture such that there is less of a chance the suture will cut into the tissue relative to a thinner suture (e.g., a traditional round suture).
Current flat sutures on the market, however, suffer from multiple drawbacks such that surgeons have been slow to utilize them. For example, the shape of the flat suture often times requires different instrumentation, thereby rendering much of the instrumentation on the market incompatible with such flat sutures. Commonly, surgeons have been using a particular instrument for a long time and are unwilling to change just to accommodate a differently-shaped suture. Another drawback of current flat sutures occurs when a surgeon attempts to tie the flat suture in a knot. Typically, the flat shape of the braided suture does not compress well, and thus the resulting knot easily loosens, or worse, comes completely undone.
Thus, there is a need in the art for a flat suture that is compatible with instrumentation on the market and which can be manipulated and handled effectively by traditional methods, such as when forming a secure knot.