Abstract
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 x 10-5). 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.