Tensile Strength of Surgical Skin Adhesives: A Novel Wound Closure Test

The purpose of this study is to introduce a wound closure testing method that reproduces a pulling or stretching force, leading to more accurate supporting data for clinicians to select the proper product when closing a low- or high-tension incision in conjunction with deep dermal sutures.

Incisions were made in the center of 70 prepared porcine skin samples. They were cleaned with isopropanol and wiped dry before applying the adhesive, as per each respective manufacturer's instructions. A tensile tester was used to pull the incisions apart and record each wound closure maximum disruption force. A paired t test assuming unequal variances was performed on the data.

This new wound closure test method was determined to be more advantageous when compared with previous methods in terms of approximation incision, approximation of clinical scenario, approximation directional force experienced by incision, number of steps, sample preparation time, and equipment needed. One specific 2-octyl cyanoacrylate topical skin adhesive product was revealed to have statistically significantly higher wound closure strength than most of the investigated adhesives. That topical skin adhesive exhibited a higher mean strength than all other cyanoacrylate tissue adhesives tested in this study.

The study indicates this wound closure test has the potential to be an ideal testing method for predicting the strength of a wound-sealing adhesive subjected to a pulling or stretching force. The topical skin adhesive that demonstrated the highest mean strength of the 7 cyanoacrylate adhesive products tested potentially could be the optimal wound closure device for low- or high-tension incisions in conjunction with deep dermal sutures.