Aims and background: We investigated what could hinder the effect of treatment with near-infrared laser therapy (830nm) around the stellate ganglion (SGL) in the treatment of atopic dermatitis (AD), the relationship between the skin symptoms score (SS) and the tenderness score (TS) and potential influence of oral steroid therapy on SS and/or TS.
Subjects and methods: Study subjects comprised patients with serious and moderate AD treated with or without oral steroids: males 164, females 194, total 358. All patients were treated with ordinary medications together with an SGL treatment to improve the patients’ lifestyle. The SS was evaluated by the patients themselves using a scale of 0 to 10. A digital pressure of approximately 5kg was applied to the tender point sites to calculate the tenderness score (TS), which was calculated as follows: TS=LE+Ax+MSC+SM. For the χ² test, data of SS and TS were first divided into 10 categories by the number of SG-L treatments and then two groups by its effect.
Results: In the steroid group, no categories out of ten categories classified by the number of the SGL days showed any significant difference in either the TS or SS, but in the non-steroid group, one category in the male, eight in the female, and nine in the total groups showed a simultaneous statistically significant difference in both the TS and SS.
Conclusions: These results show that the patients with atopic dermatitis should not be treated with long term use of oral steroid except for unavoidable cases.