Reflectance Spectrophotometry for the Evaluation of Therapeutic Effect of Falshlamp - pumped Pulsed Dye Laser for Nevus Flammeus

Park, Ki Beom; Son, Il Young; Yang, Sung Kyu; Lee, Eil Soo

Abstract

BACKGROUND: At present, flashlamp-pumped pulsed dye lasers are treatment of choice for the treatment of congenital capillary malformations like nevus flammeus. Clinical methods have been generally used to evaluate their effectiveness in many papers.
OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the effectiveness of the laser therapy in nevus flammeus patients, we used reflectance spectrophotometry as a supportive objective method in addition to the clinical evaluation.
METHODS
Thirty-two patients with definite nevus flammeus skin lesion, mainly on head and neck, were treated with flashlamp-pumped pulsed dye laser(SPTL-1b) at 8 week interval. Patients without previous treatment and the others with previous treatments were grouped separately to compare the influence of previous treatment to laser therapy. Erythema/Melanin indices were measured before and after laser therapy in both normal and lesional skin. Based on these indices, relative blanching effect were calculated.
RESULTS
Clinically, they showed 58.6% improvement in their skin color in average and Erythema/Melanin indices measured on normal skins were 13.09+/-3.91 a.u. and 34.65+/-2.82 a.u.. Erythema indices measured on lesional skins were 26.07+/-10.26 a.u. and 20.73+/-8.81 a.u. in non-treated group and 2453+/-6.14 a.u. and 21.18+/-5.47 a.u. in pre-treated group, alternatively. Relative blanching effect in both groups were calculated as 35.9% and 31.6%, meaning no significant difference(p>0.3). Clinical evaluation and relative blanching effect showed good correlation(r=0. 691).
CONCLUSION
Reflectance spectrophotometry can be useful in evaluating successful laser treatments in nevus flammeus patients. Reflectance measurements, an objective estimate of blanching, correlate well with the clinical results, and are helpful in monitoring and predicting the therapeutic outcome in dye laser treated patients.