Surgical glue made from nanoparticles is super sticky and traceable by ultrasound.
Even the least intrusive operations can damage tissue. Stitches and staples are too cumbersome for many procedures and there is a need for strong and safe surgical glues that can be seen on medical scans to help guide non-intrusive surgery.
A team led by researchers from the Institute for Basic Science in Seoul made a surgical adhesive using nanoparticles of tantalum oxide, which are opaque to x-rays and ultrasounds, wrapped inside a sticky silica shell. The team used their ‘nanoglue’ to seal a punctured liver in a rabbit. The glue proved as sticky as an approved adhesive, but with fewer side-effects such as inflammation. The team also designed a fluorescent version of the nanoparticles and used them to guide lung surgery on a rat.
Multipurpose nanoparticles such as these could help safely seal surgical wounds and may have a future in drug delivery and disease diagnosis.