MONITORING EPIDERMAL WOUND HEALING IN HUMANS BY OPTICAL COHERENCE TOMOGRAPHY

M. Ahlstrom, H. F. Larsen, Lise Mette Rahbek Gjerdrum, Anders Lindholm Sørensen, J. L. Forman, Lars Nannestad Jørgensen, Mette Mogensen, Magnus Ågren

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Abstract

Introduction: Non-invasive monitoring of wound healing is warranted. Opticalcoherence tomography (OCT) enables instant visualization of the epidermis andupper dermis. We have studied the healing of uniform epidermal wounds inhumans using OCT.

Methods: Thirty-two, 16 females and 16 males, non-smoking healthy volunteers aged18 –49 yea rs were enrolled (NCT02116725). Suction blisters were raised on each but-tock by applying chambers with a 10 mm opening at 2380 mmHg and surface tem-perature of 408C. The blister roofs comprising the entire epidermis were excised. The60 wounds were scanned by OCT on day 0 (baseline), and post-wounding days 2 and4. Full-thickness skin biopsies (12 mm 3 3 mm) of the 60 wounds were excised andprocessed for routine histology. In two volunteers, wound healing was followed over14 days by OCT and transepidermal water loss. Data were analyzed in linear mixedmod els for repeated measurements and by Bland-Altman.

Results: The complete loss of epithelium after wounding was verified by OCT.Inflammation, measured by OCT as blood vessel dilation in underlying dermis, rose14-fold (95% confidence interval: 8-26, p < 0.001) from baseline to day 2 and thentended to decline (p 5 0.090). The thickness of neoepitheliu m in creased from days 2to 4 by 19 mm(6–31mm, p 5 0.01) but was still thinner than normal epidermis. Quan-titative histology showed epithelial coverage of 39% (36–43%) on day 4. Percentagere-epithelialization measured by OCT was biased by 10% (4–16%, p < 0.001) com-pared to histology with wide limits of agreement (235–54%). On day 7, the clinicallyhe aled wounds were accompanied by steep drop in TEWL and by wound neoepithe-liu m that was thicker than adjacent intact epidermis.

Conclusions: OCT is a promising noninvasive technique in the assessment ofinflammation and epithelial thickness during human epidermal wound healing.

Original languageEnglish
JournalWound Repair and Regeneration
Volume23
Issue number4
Pages (from-to)A1-A1
Number of pages1
ISSN1067-1927
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jul 2015

Keywords

  • Arm-tip regeneration
  • regenerative phase
  • morphogenesis
  • outgrowth
  • Echinaster sepositus

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