Absorbing vessel suture material presents the particular advantage of unlimited growth potential of young vessels. This is due to low tissue irritation and only a minimum of foreign-body reaction of the tissue. Retrospectively, we compared 9 patients (5 +/- 3 years of age), who underwent resection of the coarctation and end-to-end reanastomosis, with absorbing simple continuous suture material versus 8 patients (7 +/- 5 years of age; NS) with non-absorbing suture material using a prolong-thread suture technique, who were operated between 1980 and 1986. The growth increase before to 4 years after operation (24 +/- 10% in the "absorbing suture group-A" and 36 +/- 27% in the "non-absorbing suture group-B"; NS) just as the pressure gradient (55 +/- 11 mm Hg in group A, 58 +/- 16 mm Hg in group B (NS) before and 6 +/- 8 mm Hg in group A, 5 +/- 9 mm Hg in group B (NS) 4 years after operation) shows no significant difference. Therefore one may say that absorbing material in simple continuous suture technique presents a good alternative to the non-absorbing material in the prolonged-thread suture technique for correction of aortic isthmus stenosis, whereby analogous growth can be expected.