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An In Vitro Skin Irritation Test (SIT) using the EpiDerm Reconstructed Human Epidermal (RHE) Model
Published on: July 13, 2009
A dielectric method for measuring early and late reactions in irradiated human skin
J Nuutinen1, T Lahtinen, M Turunen
1Department of Oncology, Kuopio University Hospital, Finland.
Background And Purpose:
To measure the dielectric constant of irradiated human skin in order to test the feasibility of the dielectric measurements in the quantitation of acute and late radiation reactions.
Materials And Methods:
The dielectric constant of irradiated breast skin was measured at an electromagnetic frequency of 300 MHz in 21 patients during postmastectomy radiotherapy. The measurements were performed with an open-ended coaxial line reflection method. The irradiation technique consisted of an anterior photon field to the lymph nodes and a matched electron field to the chest wall using conventional fractionation of five fractions/week to 50 Gy. Fourteen out of the 21 patients were remeasured 2 years later and the skin was palpated for subcutaneous fibrosis.
Results:
At 5 weeks the dielectric constant had decreased by 31 and 39% for the investigated skin sites of the photon and electron fields, respectively. There was a statistically significant inverse correlation between the mean dielectric constant and the clinical score of erythema. An unexpected finding was a decrease of the dielectric constant of the contralateral healthy skin during radiotherapy. Two years later a statistically significant positive correlation was found between the dielectric constant at the irradiated skin sites and the clinical score of subcutaneous fibrosis.
Conclusions:
Dielectric measurements non-invasively yield quantitative information concerning radiation-induced skin reactions.
