Does Staple Removal Hurt? What to Expect & Aftercare

Staple removal does hurt, and the discomfort is real enough that researchers have tested topical anesthetics specifically to ease it. Most people describe the sensation as a sharp pinch or tugging feeling at each staple site, with pain levels that depend heavily on where the staples are and how well the wound has healed. A clinical trial involving knee surgery patients found the procedure causes moderate-to-severe pain, which puts it a step above what many people expect going in. That said, the whole process is usually quick, and there are practical ways to make it more tolerable.

What the Removal Process Actually Feels Like

A staple remover looks nothing like the one on your desk. The medical version is a small handheld device with a jaw that slides under the center of each staple and crimps it into a shape that releases the prongs from your skin. You hear a click, feel a tug, and the staple lifts free. The sensation at each staple is brief, usually lasting a second or two, but it repeats for every staple in the wound. A short incision might have five or six staples; a longer surgical site could have twenty or more.

The pain tends to be sharpest at the first staple, partly because you do not yet know what to expect and partly because the skin around the wound edges is often the most sensitive. After a couple of removals, many people find their perception adjusts, and the remaining staples feel less intense. The degree of discomfort also depends on how tightly the wound healed around the staple legs. If the skin has partially grown over a staple, the clinician may need to work a bit harder to free it, which stings more.

How Staple Removal Compares to Suture Removal

If you have ever had stitches removed, you might wonder whether staples feel about the same. The short answer is that staple removal typically hurts more. A randomized trial in orthopedic surgery patients found that people in the staple group reported higher pain scores during removal than those who had sutures taken out. On a ten-point scale, staple patients averaged about 3.7 compared to roughly 2.5 for suture patients.

This makes intuitive sense. Sutures sit flush against or within the skin, and removing them involves snipping a thin thread and pulling it through. Staples, by contrast, have rigid metal legs that puncture the skin on both sides of the wound. Extracting them means bending the metal and pulling those prongs back out through tissue that has spent days healing around them. On the flip side, staples go in far faster during surgery. The same trial found wound closure with staples took under five minutes on average, compared to about twelve minutes with sutures. Surgeons often choose staples when speed matters or when the incision is long and straight, accepting that removal day will be a bit more uncomfortable for the patient.

Where on the Body It Hurts Most

Pain during staple removal is not uniform across the body. Joints and areas with thin skin over bone tend to be more sensitive. The knee is a well-studied example. A trial focused specifically on staple removal after total knee replacement surgery classified the pain as moderate to severe, and found that applying a topical lidocaine patch before removal significantly reduced it without causing complications like wound contamination or systemic side effects.

Scalp staples, on the other hand, tend to be among the least painful to remove. The scalp has a thick layer of tissue and dense blood supply, and staples placed there after lacerations or cranial surgery often come out with only a brief pinch. The abdomen sits somewhere in the middle. Cesarean section incisions typically use staples, and while removal is not pleasant, the abdominal skin is thicker than the skin over a knee or shin. If your staples are on a joint or over a bony prominence, it is reasonable to ask your provider about a topical numbing option beforehand.

How to Manage the Pain

You do not have to white-knuckle your way through the appointment. Several practical steps can help:

Topical anesthetics: The lidocaine patch studied in knee surgery patients was applied around the wound about 30 minutes before removal and produced a meaningful drop in pain scores. Ask your provider whether a topical numbing cream or patch is appropriate for your situation.
Timing your painkillers: If you are already taking over-the-counter pain relief, taking a dose about an hour before the appointment can take the edge off.
Breathing techniques: Slow, deliberate breathing during each staple extraction sounds simple but genuinely helps. Holding your breath tends to increase perceived pain.
Conversation or distraction: Many nurses will talk you through the process or encourage you to look away. Watching the removal tends to make people tense up, which tightens the skin and can make each pull more noticeable.

The lidocaine-patch approach is worth highlighting because it addresses a gap in how staple removal is typically handled. Historically, providers have not offered pain management for the procedure, treating it as too brief to bother with. The research suggests that for high-sensitivity areas, that assumption leaves patients in unnecessary discomfort.

When Staples Should Come Out

Staples are typically removed within seven to fourteen days after placement. The exact timing depends on where they are and how the wound is healing. Scalp staples often come out on the earlier end of that window because the scalp heals quickly. Staples over joints or on the trunk, where more tension pulls at the wound edges, may stay in longer. Individual factors like age, diabetes, steroid use, or poor nutrition can slow healing and push the timeline further out.

Getting the timing right matters. Remove staples too early, and the wound may reopen. A trial comparing early versus delayed staple removal after cesarean section in patients with higher body weight found that early removal led to a wound separation rate of about 15%, compared to roughly 12% in the group that waited longer.

That gap was not statistically definitive in that particular trial, but the trend is consistent with what surgeons generally observe: thicker tissue and higher wound tension need more healing time. The same study also found that higher body mass index, urgent surgery, and infection at the time of delivery each independently increased the risk of wound complications.

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Leaving staples in too long is not ideal either. Overly prolonged contact can lead to the skin growing over the staple edges, making removal more painful and potentially leaving more noticeable marks. Your provider will set a removal date based on your specific wound. If you cannot make the appointment, call to reschedule rather than just leaving them in.

Aftercare Once the Staples Are Out

When the staples come out, the wound may look healed on the surface but it is still fragile underneath. The top layer of skin has knit together, but the deeper tissue can take weeks or months to reach full strength. This is why providers often apply adhesive wound closure strips after removal. These strips hold the wound edges together during the vulnerable period and help prevent the incision from splitting under everyday movement.

Not all wound closure tapes are equal. A study testing seven different brands found that most lost their grip quickly when any tension was applied. Only two brands maintained significant adhesion on their own, and applying a liquid adhesive underneath dramatically improved the sticking power of all seven.

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In practice, the strips are left in place and allowed to fall off on their own over the course of a week or so. Do not peel them off early. While they are on, keep the area clean and dry. Showering is usually fine after the first day or two, but soaking in a bath, pool, or hot tub should wait until the wound is fully closed and your provider clears it.

Signs That Something Is Wrong

After staple removal, watch the wound for signs of infection or reopening. The standard warning signs used by surgeons to identify a surgical site infection include pus draining from the wound, redness spreading beyond the incision edges, swelling, increasing warmth, and worsening pain rather than improving pain.

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A small amount of clear or slightly pink fluid oozing from the incision line in the first day or two after removal is normal. That is different from thick, cloudy, or foul-smelling discharge, which warrants a call to your provider. Similarly, if the wound edges separate even slightly, do not try to fix it yourself with butterfly bandages. A reopened surgical wound needs professional evaluation to determine whether it can be re-closed or should heal on its own from the inside out.

Certain patient groups face higher odds of post-removal complications. People with poorly controlled diabetes, those on immunosuppressive medications, and those who had emergency rather than planned surgery all carry elevated wound-healing risks. If you fall into any of these categories, keep your follow-up appointments and report changes early.

What About Scarring

One concern people have is whether staples leave worse scars than stitches. The answer is more nuanced than a simple yes or no, and the timeline matters. A clinical study comparing staples and sutures for neck wounds found that at the ten-day mark, scars looked better in the suture group. But when the same patients were evaluated six months later, the staple group’s scars had caught up and actually looked better.

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The early difference likely reflects the small puncture marks that staple legs leave on either side of the incision, sometimes called “railroad track” marks. These fade over time as the skin remodels. The longer-term advantage of staples may come from the fact that they distribute tension more evenly along the wound and cause less tissue reaction than suture material, which sits inside the skin and can trigger a mild inflammatory response while it is in place.

A broader meta-analysis of orthopaedic surgery patients found no significant difference between staples and sutures for complications like inflammation, wound discharge, tissue death, or allergic reactions.

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If scarring concerns you, the most impactful things you can do happen after the wound is healed: protect the scar from sun exposure for at least a year, keep it moisturized, and consider silicone scar sheets if the scar is in a cosmetically sensitive area. These measures matter more than whether the wound was closed with staples or sutures.

Staple Removal in Children

Kids get scalp staples surprisingly often, usually after a fall or bump that opens up a laceration. Taking a child back to a clinic for staple removal can be stressful for both the child and the parent, and some emergency departments have started training caregivers to remove staples at home instead. A study of thirty families whose children received scalp staples found that 93% of caregivers successfully removed all staples at home. Every caregiver who completed a follow-up survey said they would prefer home removal over a clinic visit if the situation arose again, and all reported feeling very comfortable with the process.

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Home removal is not appropriate for every wound, and it requires proper instruction and a standard staple remover provided by the clinic. But for straightforward scalp lacerations in children, it can spare the family a return trip and reduce the child’s anxiety about being in a medical setting again. If your child’s staples are candidates for home removal, the treating provider will walk you through the technique and what to watch for afterward.

The Removal Tool and When It Is Not Available

The dedicated staple remover is a single-use disposable device that costs very little and is standard in any clinic or hospital. But situations arise where staples need to come out and the proper tool is not immediately at hand, particularly in emergency settings or in remote locations. A study using a skin simulation model compared removal times and found that it actually takes about 55% longer to remove staples than sutures. When a standard staple remover was unavailable, an artery forceps applied correctly was just as fast as the dedicated tool.

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This is reassuring if you are in a rural clinic or an emergency room that has run out of removers, but it is not an invitation to try removing staples with household tools. The mechanism matters: the remover or forceps bends the staple’s crossbar upward so the legs straighten and slide out cleanly. Pulling a staple straight out without reshaping it first would tear the skin. If you are ever in a situation where you or a caregiver need to remove staples outside a clinical setting, use only the tool provided by the treating facility and follow the instructions you were given.

Why Providers Still Choose Staples

Given that staple removal hurts more than suture removal, you might wonder why surgeons use them at all. Speed is the main reason. In head and neck cancer surgery, a randomized trial found that staples closed wounds roughly ten times faster than sutures while producing comparable results in patient comfort, cosmetic outcomes, and complication rates.

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For long incisions, that time difference adds up. A shorter closure means less time under anesthesia, lower infection risk from an open wound in the operating room, and faster turnover for surgical teams handling heavy caseloads. Staples also produce a consistent, even closure with minimal handling of the wound edges, which can reduce tissue trauma during the closing process itself. The tradeoff is a few minutes of extra discomfort at removal, which for most patients is a reasonable exchange for a safer, faster surgery. If the choice between staples and sutures is available for your procedure, it is a legitimate question to raise with your surgeon beforehand so you know what to expect on both ends.