PURPOSE: To measure the duration of the operation, the strength of tissue adhesion, and to perform a clinical and histopathological study of ocular reinsertion of superior rectus muscles of rabbits with four different tissue adhesives, as an alternative to the use of polyglactin suture in strabismus surgeries. METHODS: One hundred New Zealand rabbits were used for two experiments: I-A and I-B, with fifty rabbits for each experiment. These groups were further divided into five groups of ten rabbits (twenty eyes), which were subjected to the removal of the superior rectus muscle of both eyes, either with suture (control) or tissue adhesive: polyglactin 910, 6-0 suture and tissue adhesives made of fibrin, cyanoacrylate, albumin-glutaraldehyde and gelatine-resorcinol-formaldehyde-glutaraldehyde. The rabbits in experiment I-A were subjected to dynamometry for ten minutes following repositioning of the muscle. The rabbits in experiment I-B were subjected to clinical evaluation and to histopathologic evaluation. RESULTS: Better performance of the tissue adhesives in relation to the time taken to carry out the surgery was observed. None of the adhesives met the parameters used for strength, that is, in some cases the reinserted muscle did not resist to the application of forces up to 100 gf. The clinical and histopathologic evaluations showed that only the fibrin adhesive presented a better performance than the polyglactin suture while the other results were worse than those of the controls (suture). CONCLUSION: It was observed that the adhesives studied are not suitable for strabismus surgeries.
Tissue adhesives; Oculomotor muscles; Strabismus; Fibrin tissue adhesive; Polyglactin 910; Sutures; Rabbits
