UDC 616.34-089.84:615.472.2 In the last two decades instruments for mechanical suture have been introduced on a wide scale in abdominal surgery. Most Soviet suturing instruments (the NZhKA-60, PKS-25, KTs-28, SPTU) and their American counterparts (YIA, EEA) are designed to form anastomoses with an invested suture. Besides their undoubted advantages, these instruments also have certain dis- advantages due to the character of the suture they form: difficulty in examining the region of anastomosis, making it difficult to assess whether the suture has been correctly applied, and that hemostasis is satisfactory, the need to introduce the working part of the instrument into the lumen of the organs to be sutured, making the operation less aseptic, and the possi- bility of development of stenosis in the region of anastomosis (3, 5, 6, 8).