Home Hair Removal
The Silk’n™ home hair removal device was tested for clinical safety and efficacy. 20 Patients were using the Silk’n™ at their home to remove unwanted body hairs. Treatment protocol involve 3 treatment sessions at 2 weeks intervals, results were followed at 3 months post last treatment. Results show average of 60% reduction in hair count at the follow up session. We can conclude that home hair removal with the Silk’n™ device is proven to be safe and effective.
At Home Hair Removal
Home hair removal was the long time goal of patients from the early days of using lasers and pulse light for hair removal. Based on the strong desire to be rid of unwanted hair from various parts of the body, Photo-Epilation became the number one medical cosmetic procedure. Since first introduced in 1995 laser hair removal and later pulsed light hair removal had been widely spread world wide. Due to devices’ cost, until recently the procedure was available only at physicians’ offices. The newly developed Silk’n™ – a small, low cost and safe home hair removal device, now makes it possible to let patients treat themselves at home.
Like professional-use devices the Silk’n™ home hair removal photo-epilation is based on light heating of the hair shaft created by selective absorption of optical energy that is accompanied by an acoustic effect. The primary challenge of photo-epilation is to deliver the right amount of energy to the hair root that is required to damage it, without affecting its surrounding tissue. Optimization of the Silk’n™ device was done by fine tuning energy parameters for safe and effective home hair removal treatment.
Study objectives
The clinical study was conducted to evaluate this new method of home hair removal. The study method included self-treatment with Silk’n™ at the participants’ home.
Methods and Patients
20 female patients with Fitzpatrick`s skin type 1 to 4 and various hair colors were selected for the study. Table 1 below, shows the distribution of patients by skin type. Patients’ ages ranged from 18 to 56 years.
A variety of body sites were chosen for the study, as shown in Table 2 below. Face was excluded from the study.
| Skin Type | Number of patients |
|---|---|
| 1 | 5 |
| 2 | 6 |
| 3 | 4 |
| 4 | 5 |
| Site | Number of patients |
|---|---|
| Underarm | 9 |
| Bikini Line | 9 |
| Arms | 5 |
| Legs | 11 |
Note that some patients treated multiple sites. Informed consent of all participants was obtained and the body sites to be treated were identified and photographed. A baseline hair count was obtained manually. The target areas were shaved prior to treatment. All users took Silk’n™ home and used it for their home hair removal treatments.
Treatment protocol and results
Immediate tissue response The immediate results of using home hair removal device were light erythema at 30% of the users that lasted for several minutes.
Results
The study patients were observed 3 months after the treatment. A clinical examination and hair count were employed to access the efficacy of the treatment. Clearance (see Table 3 below) was calculated as the ratio between the value of the baseline hair count taken immediately pre-treatment and the value obtained at the 3-month post-treatment hair count. Reduction of hair count was seen at all patients. Maximum reduction in hair was observed 2 weeks after the third treatment. In table 3 presents the average hair reduction at the 3 months follow up session of using the Silk’n™ home hair removal device.
Discussion & Conclusion
The clinical study results show that all users got very good hair reduction with average values in the range of 50–70%. These home hair removal results are comparable to the results of professional systems used by health care providers. The Silkn™ Home hair removal methodologies based on photo-epilation systems have shown very good clinical results, with excellent efficacy and safety. The current study of a home hair removal using Silk’n™ further showed that even a small portable system has pulse energy that is strong enough to cause the desired delay in hair growth. Treatments were reported by the subjects to be virtually painless. The efficacy, absence of adverse side effects, and ease of patient experience shown in the clinical study prove that Silk’n™ can be used as a device for home hair removal.
