Researchers may have found a quick, easy and less painful way to close up scalp lacerations -- sealing the wound by gluing patients' hair together.

Doctors in Singapore report that the technique -- dubbed HAT (for hair apposition technique) -- was as good as, if not better than, traditional suturing for closing certain scalp lacerations among their study patients.

The HAT tactic starts with the standard cleansing of the scalp wound, but instead of sewing up the laceration, doctors take hair from both sides of the wound, twist it, then apply special "tissue glue" to hold the hair -- and the wound -- together.

Among the advantages of HAT are speed, reduced pain and no need for shaving the scalp or removing stitches.

The researchers used HAT for 96 patients with scalp lacerations and compared them with 93 given standard sutures. All patients in the HAT group were judged to have "satisfactory" wound healing, compared with about 96% of suture patients. In addition, HAT patients had less pain and scarring, and the procedure generally took about 5 minutes, as opposed to 15 minutes for suturing.

But HAT is not for all patients with scalp lacerations. For example, wounds that are bleeding heavily would do better with sutures, they point out. And because only the outer-most layer of skin is held together by the technique, wounds may more easily break open again.

And of course, the researchers note, patients with very short hair -- or none at all -- would not be candidates.

Annals of Emergency Medicine 2002;40:19-26