How to use marking sutures on soft tissue lesions

Sutures are commonly used to mark excised soft tissue lesions in order to orientate the specimens for histological examination. Inappropriate application, leading to tissue trauma, has been reported by our pathology department to compromise histological examination of the specimen. Here we describe a marker suture technique that will avoid crushing the underlying tissue and therefore minimise the adverse effect on histological analysis. This technique may be applied to the excision of both superficial and deep soft tissue lesions.