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Science / Medicine : ‘Natural Glue’ Closes Incisions, Doctor Says

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From Times Staff and Wire Reports

A clotting substance extracted from a patient’s blood can be used as a natural glue to close some surgical incisions, and it eventually might offer a new way to stop bleeding during operations, a Los Angeles physician reports.

In a letter to the Journal of the American Medical Assn. last week, Dr. Mark A. Mandel said he had successfully used a spray of a patient’s fibrinogen to replace most of the sutures that would have been needed to close the incisions of an eyelid lift. Fibrinogen is a blood component essential to blood clotting.

This natural glue seals the incision and avoids the formation of cysts and lesions called granulomas at suture sites, said Mandel, who is in private practice in Century City. The extraction of the fibrinogen from a patient’s own previously donated blood also avoids any transmission of disease, such as AIDS.

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In Europe, where fibrinogen extracts are more widely used in surgery, he said, the fibrinogen is extracted from pooled blood donations, he said.

Mandel said fibrinogen sprays might also offer a new way to stem bleeding during certain surgeries or in emergency situations. Mandel plans to present the results at an American College of Surgeons meeting in Santa Barbara in January.

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