Thermographic Follow-Up of a Mild Case of Herpes Zoster
September 2010
in “
Archives of Dermatology
”
TLDR Thermography matched the patient's pain levels in a shingles case and might help diagnose shingles without a rash.
The document reports a case study of a 39-year-old Korean man with a mild case of herpes zoster (shingles) and follows the progression of his condition using thermography, an imaging technique that measures skin temperature. The study found a correlation between the thermal images and the intensity of the patient's pain, suggesting that thermography could be an objective tool to assess subjective pain symptoms in herpes zoster patients. The patient's pain and skin lesions resolved after medication, and the study observed that the temperature differences between the lesions and normal skin, as well as the visual analog scale (VAS) scores for pain, followed a similar time course. The study also suggested that thermography might be useful in diagnosing herpes zoster sine herpete (shingles without rash) or early herpes zoster before skin eruptions occur. The findings indicate that further case studies are needed to generalize the observations, but the results could be valuable for designing future studies using thermography in dermatologic disorders.