effect of tissue adhesive octyl-2-cyanoacrylate in traumatic facial wounds

Introduction: tissue adhesives have been taken into consideration because they do not need to be removed after wound healing. this study was conducted to compare scars remained by octyl-2-cyanoacrylate and sutures in traumatic facial wounds in adults. materials and methods: this randomized clinical trial study was performed on 50 patients aged 15-50 years referred to babol shahid beheshti hospital due to traumatic facial wounds. written informed consent was obtained for each patient. the patients were divided into two groups. in the first group, patients were treated with 5-0 nylon suture and octyl-2-cyanoacrylate was used for wound repairment in second group. the patients were followed up on 1, 7, 60 and 120 days after wound healing and assessed by patient and observer scar assessment scale (posas) and vancouver criteria to evaluate remaining scar. also amount of pain intensity was determined by the visual analogue scale (vas) criteria, 7 days after wound healing. data was analyzed by spss v16, t-test, friedman, chi-square and man-whitney-u tests. results: twenty-eight (56%) were male and 22(44%) female. there was a significant decreasing trend in vancouver and posas indices during 120 days of study (p<0.001). based on posas and vancouver criteria there was no significant difference between two groups on the days 1, 60 and 120. however, on day 7, there was significantly better healing result in the adhesive group compared to the suture group. based on the vas criteria; the average pain intensity was 4.14±1.16 in sutured group, on 7th day (p=0.00). there was no significant difference in wound closure time between the two groups (p=0.07). conclusion: generally, there was no significant difference between the scar left by sutures and tissue adhesives after 120 days.