Sticky situations: cyanoacrylate exposures reported to a poison control system

Cyanoacrylate (Super Glue^®) exposures are commonly reported to poison control centers, but little has been published in the medical literature regarding these exposures. We sought to characterize cyanoacrylate exposures reported to a poison control system.

We performed a retrospective review of a poison system's database for all cases of single-substance human exposure to cyanoacrylate-containing products from 2005 to 2015. Data collected included age, gender, route of exposure, clinical effects, treatments recommended and medical outcome.

There were a total of 893 patients, 505 (56.6%) of which were female. Patient ages ranged from 6 months to 88 years with a median of 11 years. The vast majority of exposures (n = 871, 97.5%) were unintentional, but a small number of exposures (n = 22, 2.5%) were due to intentional misuse (such as trying to stop a bleeding cut) or malicious intent (such as purposefully gluing a person's eyes shut as a prank). Routes of exposure included: ingestion, n = 337 (37.7%); ocular, n = 322 (36.1%); dermatologic, n = 285 (31.9%); inhalation, n = 16 (1.8%); nasal, n = 1 (0.1%); and otic, n = 1 (0.1%); some patients had multiple routes of exposure. Treatments recommended by the poison center included irrigation (n = 411), petroleum jelly (n = 143), mineral oil (n = 131), topical antibiotic ointment (n = 82), peanut butter (n = 6), acetone (n = 4) and WD-40^® (n = 2). A total of 657 patients (73.6%) were managed on-site, while 236 (26.4%) were seen in a health care facility. Among all exposures, effects were classified as none (n = 287), minor (n = 529) and moderate (n = 77). No major effects or deaths were reported.

In this case series, the majority of cases occurred in children and most exposures did not result in significant morbidity. Notably, there was wide variation in terms of recommended treatments; further study is needed to determine the optimal treatment method and to standardize poison center recommendations for treating patients with cyanoacrylate exposures.