Morphological characteristics and its relation to microcirculation in the skin at the bony and non-bony areas

1999 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

• Project/Area Number: 09672407
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Nursing
• Research Institution: OITA MEDICAL UNIVERSITY
• Principal Investigator: SHIMADA Tatsuo School of Medicine, OITA MEDICAL UNIVERSITY, Professor, 医学部, 教授 (80080555)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): ASADA Yuji School of Medicine, OITA MEDICAL UNIVERSITY, Research Associate, 医学部, 助手 (30284798) ; ARAO Hiromi School of Medicine, OITA MEDICAL UNIVERSITY, Research Associate, 医学部, 助手 (00274746) ; HAGISAWA Satsue School of Medicine, OITA MEDICAL UNIVERSITY, Professor, 医学部, 教授 (90040071)
• Project Period (FY): 1997 – 1999
• Keywords: Pressure sore / Compression / Morphological change / Physiological change / Capillary distribution / Elastic fiber distribution / Skin blood flow

Research Abstract

This study was undertaken to determine how morphological characteristics and its relation to microcirculation in the skin are different between bony and non-bony areas with respect to the development of pressure sores.
Human skin tissues were excised from 5 subjects post mortem 6-8 hours after death. The skin tissues were obtained from three different sites of the body: sacrum and ischial tuberosity as bony area and center of gluteus maximus as non-bony area. The skin samples were processed for the examination of light microscopy and scanning electron microscopy.
Skin blood flow of the three different sites described above was measured in healthy subjects using a laser Doppler flow meter (Advance ALF21N, Japan) at resting to determine the relationship between morphological and physiological findings.
It was found that the papillary layer over the sacrum contained dense capillary and few elastic fibers, center of gluteus maximus contained few capillary and dense elastic fibers and the ischial tuberosity contained moderate capillary and elastic fibers.
The results of skin blood flow obtained were correspondent to the density of capillary, such as at the sacrum where high density of capillary was observed, high blood flow was shown while at the center of gluteus maximus where few capillary was found it was low.
From the results obtained it was suggested that one of the reasons why the sacrum area is predisposing to pressure sore development is due to less elasticity and almost no subcutaneous tissues over the bone resulting in force applied to the limited bony area leading to the delay of tissue recovery following deformation and subsequent tissue insults likely.