An Ex Vivo Comparison of 2 Cyanoacrylate Skin Protectants.

PURPOSE

The purpose of these experiments was to compare 2 commercially available skin protectants with different chemical compositions.

DESIGN

Two materially different skin protectants were applied to ex vivo pig skin, subjected to stresses, and the resulting skin was observed and analyzed.

METHODS

Using ex vivo pig skin, we sought to better understand the physical differences between a cyanoacrylate-based and a mixed cyanoacrylate/acrylic polymer-based skin protectant. A combination of imaging techniques and microscopic analyses was used to observe and quantify differences in layer thickness and the degree of steadfastness of the layers to liquid stresses.

RESULTS

The experiments revealed that the solely cyanoacrylate-based protectant created a layer that was, on average, 5.1 times thicker than the mixed polymer product (p= 1.8 × 10). Observation via electron microscopy also revealed that the extent of coverage varied between the 2 products. In a final experiment, we observed that the mixed polymer product maintained a high degree of adhesiveness, which led to the removal of sheets of epithelium upon gentle blotting.

CONCLUSIONS

The experiments revealed that while the 2 skin protectants share a common ingredient, both the quantity of that ingredient and the inclusion of other materials in one of them lead to substantially different properties when tested in the research setting.