MANAGEMENT OF ACUTE RADIATION-INDUCED SKIN DERMATITIS WITH CAMWELL™ HERB-TO-SOOTHE CREAM IN HEAD AND NECK CANCER PATIENTS RECEIVING RADIOTHERAPY - A SINGLE INSTITUTION PILOT OBSERVATIONAL STUDY -
Purpose
Background
Materials & Methods
The Skindex is validated to measure the effects of skin disease on patient bother and Quality of Life (QoL), with a higher Skindex score correlating to worse patient skin disease and poorer QoL.
The primary eligibility criteria for this analysis were 1) HNC patients treated with radiotherapy with curative intent who 2) completed the Skindex on a secure web- browser 3) during weekly office visits with 4) missing no more than 25% of questions.
Patients were retrospectively categorized into one of the following three management groups for analysis: “prophylactic” – patient self-reported starting use of Camwell in the first week of treatment, “therapeutic” – patient self-reported starting use of Camwell after the first week of treatment, or “Standard of Care” (SoC) – patient self-reported use of other skin agent or did not use any skin agent throughout treatment. A non-parametric Krustal-Wallis test was used to compare the Mean Total Skindex Score (MTS) for each of the three management groups, as the primary objective measure
Results
The MTS of the prophylactic, SoC and therapeutic groups of patients was 7.2, 13.3 and 8.6 respectively (p = 0.067). The mean VAS skin pain score of the prophylactic, SoC and therapeutic groups of patients was 0.7, 1.0 and 1.0 respectively (p = 0.29). Analysis of weekly data demonstrated the MTS and VAS increased earlier during the RT in the SoC and therapeutic groups than it did in the prophylactic group. Analysis of maximum CTCAE score demonstrated the majority of patients in the prophylactic group (48%) experienced grade 1 RISD, while the majority of patients in the therapeutic (33%) and SoC (56%) group experienced Grade 2 RISD (p = 0.009).
Discussion
Additionally, the therapeutic group started Camwell at various time points throughout treatment, with various degrees of RISD and Skindex scores initially. The effect of Camwell as a therapeutic rather than prophylactic agent, needs to be further explored.