The Clinical Application of Optical Spectroscopy in Monitoring Tissue Oxygen Supply Following Cancer Treatment

Abstract

This paper describes a number of clinical applications of non-invasive visible wavelength lightguide spectroscopy (VLS) for monitoring tissue oxygen saturation (SO₂) in patients following (or in one case during) cancer treatment. The first study involved measurements on patients receiving standard fractionated radiotherapy to the breast for conservation therapy of breast carcinoma. The aim was to investigate whether VLS could detect changes in breast skin early on in the course of radiotherapy treatment that might be predictive of acute or delayed severe skin reactions. In the second study described here, VLS was applied to the continuous monitoring of transverse rectus abdominis myocutaneous flap tissue oxygenation for the first 72 h post-surgery in order to investigate whether changes in tissue SO₂ can be used to warn of possible vascular occlusion. In the third study, we applied the technique peri-operatively, for the measurement of colonic mucosal and serosal tissue oxygenation in order to attempt to define safe margins for colon resection in patients with bowel cancer. In all of the above studies, VLS has proved to be a robust and sensitive method for measuring tissue oxygenation. It may, therefore, prove to be a valuable tool for investigating the role of the primo-vascular system in studies of tumour pathophysiology.