Safety and patency of mechanical (stapled) bowel anastomoses has been widely studied. It is generally the case in such studies that sutured anastomoses are either comparable or less prone to leakage.[7] It is possible that this is the result of recent advances in suture technology, along with increasingly risk-conscious surgical practice. Certainly modern synthetic sutures are more predictable and less prone to infection than catgut, silk and linen, which were the main suture materials used up to the 1990s.