Uday Bhatt, Amandeep Kaur

Background: Traditional method of attaching the conjunctival autograft following pterygium surgery involves surturing with Vicryl. This means the patients will have to endure discomfort from the suture ends at least for a couple of weeks. In this audit, outcome measures of surgical time, patient discomfort, complications and recurrence rates of the Artiss glue technique were compared with Vicryl sutures.
Twenty consecutive patients having standard con- junctival autograft placed with Artiss ftbrin glue are compared with 20 having surgery with the autograft with Vicryl sutures. Patients were followed up to 6 months following surgery.
Benchmarking/Standard: Pterygium surgery with conjunctival autograft attached with sutures.
Results: Mean surgical time for the glue group was signiftcantly shorter at 16 mins compared with the suture group at 28 min (P < 0.001). Postoperative pain was signiftcantly less at day 1 (P < 0.001) and day 4 (P < 0.05) but was not signiftcantly different following removal of sutures on day 4 in the suture group. Complications in the glue group included one patient with an absent graft at day 4 that required further intervention. There were 1 recurrence each in the glue and suture group at 6 months follow up. Recommendations: Attachment of conjunctival autograft following pterygium surgery with Artiss glue is safe and effective method. The glued auto- graft recurrence rate at 6 months was similar to that of sutured grafts. Conjunctival autograft with Artiss glue in pterygium surgery have the advantage of decreased surgical time and less postoperative pain in the ftrst few days. However, this group had higher risk of graft loss.