P10.145 EVALUATIONS OF PHOTO-EPILATION EFFECT BY GROSS OBSERVATIONS ARE RELIABLE?

ChangHun Huh, JunKyu Oh^*, KyoungChan Park

Department of Dermatology, Seoul National University Bundang Hospital, Kyounggi, Korea; ^*Rich Hair Clinic, Seoul, Korea

Objectives: Many people want permanent hair removal and many lasers or intense pulsed light (IPL) have been used for this purpose. The evaluation of different methods of the photo-epilation effect is limited and most published data relies on patients’ evaluation or hair count only.

We want to study the photo-epilation efficacy using photo-trichogram and clarify the correlations between subjective evaluation and photo-trichogram data.

Methods: 26 axillae of 13 females were photo-epilated by IPL (Powerlite 600® EX, PreSwede AB, Mölndal, Sweden) and photo-trichograms were conducted before and 3 months after photo-epilation. Subjective evaluations were collected from questionnaires including a 10-point scale of the patients’ and doctors’ gross observation.

Results: We found that all parameters of photo-trichogram indicated that photo-epilation by IPL was effective (p<0.05); Total hair count, hair density, hair growth rate, anagen hair fraction, and mean hair diameter were decreased and vellus hair fraction was increased. There was no statistically significance in correlation test between photo-trichogram results and patients’ or doctors’ evaluations. Among those, the most correlated variable was non-vellus hair count vs. doctors’ evaluation (p=0.064).

Conclusions: We can conclude from our photo-trichogram data that photo-epilation by IPL is effective. In addition, a more objective method than gross observation must be adopted for the evaluation of photo-epilation efficacy.