A smart glue may safely fill cuts in the outer eyeball in emergency situations, keeping the wound safe until proper treatment is available.
In battlefield situations or remote locations, people who sustain eyeball injuries may not be able to find someone capable of the skilled microsurgery they need to stitch up their wound. The longer they go without, the more likely they are to get an infection or suffer a detachment of the retina, due to lower eyeball pressure.
鈥淓ach day that no intervention is taken, the risk of permanent vision loss increases,鈥� says ,聽of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
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His team have developed a special type of iso-propylacrylamide glue. The substance is a liquid at temperatures lower than 25掳C, but when it is squirted into an eyeball wound, the higher body temperature makes it solidify within 2 minutes, plugging the hole. When the injured person is able to get surgical attention, the plug can be removed simply by cooling it down with water.
Retinas intact
The team have tested their glue in rabbits, finding that retinas remained intact in injured rabbits treated with the glue. In those that weren鈥檛 given the glue, the retinas began to peel away. The treated animals also developed less inflammation from their eye wounds.
Military surgeons have already had a go with the glue, trying it out on eyes from dead pigs. After two attempts, all 44 of the surgeons attending a private seminar were able to apply the glue successfully to eyeball lacerations.聽鈥淭he sealant is very easy to use, and we鈥檝e developed a simple syringe-like tool allowing it to be quickly deployed,鈥� says Whalen, who hopes to begin human trials by 2019.
鈥淚t has promise, and it鈥檚 a novel idea to patch up a hole before it can be properly treated,鈥澛爏ays聽, a surgeon at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London. But he thinks it may not be as straightforward to use in people as in the rabbits. 鈥淥n the battlefield, there may be loads of blood obscuring things, and having the glue in the eye is going to cause a lot of discomfort,鈥� he says.
