Abstract
Fractional resurfacing creates hundreds of microscopic wounds in the skin without injuring surrounding tissue. This technique allows rapid wound healing owing to small injury regions, and has been proven as an effective method for repairing photodamaged skin. Recently, ablative fractional laser (AFL) treatment has been demonstrated to facilitate topical drug delivery into skin. However, induced fractional photothermolysis depends on several parameters, such as incident angle, exposure energy, and spot size of the fractional laser. In this study, we used fractional CO2 laser to induce microscopic ablation array on the nail for facilitating drug delivery through the nail. To ensure proper energy delivery without damaging tissue structures beneath the nail plate, optical coherence tomography (OCT) was implemented for quantitative evaluation of induced microscopic ablation zone (MAZ). Moreover, to further study the feasibility of drug delivery, normal saline was dripped on the exposure area of fingernail and the speckle variance in OCT signal was used to observe water diffusion through the ablative channels into the nail plate. In conclusion, this study establishes OCT as an effective tool for the investigation of fractional photothermolysis and water/drug delivery through microscopic ablation channels after nail fractional laser treatment.
Highlights
A lot of studies have been focusing on the technical improvement in drug delivery such as focused ultrasound [1,2], microwave [3,4], and microneedle patch [5,6]
To study fractional photothermolysis induced by an ablative fractional laser (AFL), four finger nails of the same female volunteer were exposed by an AFL with various exposure energies of 20, 30, 40, and 50 mJ
Dermoscopy of the free edge demonstrated arrays of cylindrical microscopic ablation zone (MAZ) that extended into the nail plate, these MAZs were due to tissue volatilization induced by the AFL
Summary
A lot of studies have been focusing on the technical improvement in drug delivery such as focused ultrasound [1,2], microwave [3,4], and microneedle patch [5,6]. With exposure of focused ultrasound, the vascular permeability can be enhanced, making drug delivery from the vessel to surrounding tissue easier. Low-temperature microwave opens up pores in bacteria cells, inducing significant improvement in drug delivery. Focused ultrasound with microbubbles is implemented for increasing the vascular permeability to facilitate drug delivery from the vessels to surrounding tissue. Microwave technique is still not mature, according to the previous studies. Limited to the size and material of microneedle patch, the efficiency of microneedle-assisted transdermal drug delivery is influenced. The abovementioned methods can only be applied in limited situations
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