Health Care : Current Reviews

The non-touch palpation, a new diagnostic means of skin ageing

Euro Health Care and Fitness Summit

September 01-03, 2015 Valencia, Spain

H Zahouani and M Djaghloul

University of Lyon, France

Posters-Accepted Abstracts: Health Care: Current Reviews

Abstract:

The longevity of life is a recent unsurpassed demographic phenomenon in the history of the humanity and impact of which will be considerable. The analysis of ageing of populations and its social consequences requests an interdisciplinary approach. By gathering capacities of research in these different domains, it becomes possible to treat in a transverse way the big questions linked to ageing and to longevity, by understanding better all the factors that drive to the fragility of the old tissues (origin of diseases, of dysfunctions and handicaps). Currently, most skin diseases are evaluated qualitatively with visual inspection and/or palpation by a clinician who has significant training and clinical experience in the field. During manual palpation, pathological tissue regions can be identified by the strain response to an imposed stress compared with its surrounding healthy tissue. This method of diagnosis has high variability among clinicians; therefore, a fast and non-invasive technique capable to evaluate skin mechanical properties is highly anticipated as a diagnostic means. Changes of dermal collagen and elastin content are characteristic for skin ageing as well as for pathological skin conditions. To study the visco-elasticity of sub-cutaneous layers during ageing, a novel combination of the noncontact air stream, 3D imaging and an ultrasonore device (20 MHz) has been developed. The skin deformation by the calibrated air pressure causes the propagation of an elastic wave. For a multi-layer aspect of skin, the velocity of the elastic wave is influenced by the mechanical properties of all the layers. The visco- elastic properties that affect the velocity dispersion include not only the Young modulus, the thickness of each layer but also the density of elastic and collagen fibers. The quantitative feature and measurement accuracy of this method is demonstrated from the experiments of ageing of volar forearm.

Biography :

Email: hassan.zahouani@ec-lyon.fr