Understanding the Role of Plasma Bullet Currents in Heating Skin to Mitigate Risks of Thermal Damage Caused by Low-Temperature Atmospheric-Pressure Plasma Jets

Plasma

article

Shunya Hashimoto¹  Hideo Fukuhara²  Endre J. Szili³  Chiaki Kawada²  Sung-Ha Hong³  Yuta Matsumoto⁴  Tatsuru Shirafuji¹  Masayuki Tsuda⁵  Atsushi Kurabayashi⁶  Mutsuo Furihata⁶  Hiroshi Furuta⁷  Akimitsu Hatta⁷  Keiji Inoue²  Jun-Seok Oh¹ 

[1] Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka City University;Department of Urology, Kochi Medical School, Kochi University;Future Industries Institute, University of South Australia;Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka Metropolitan University;Division of Laboratory Animal Science, Life and Functional Materials, Kochi Medical School, Kochi University;Department of Pathology, Kochi Medical School, Kochi University;Department of Electronic & Photonic Systems Engineering, Kochi University of Technology;Center for Photodynamic Medicine, Kochi Medical School, Kochi University

关键词: nonthermal atmospheric pressure plasma;    helium plasma jet;    bullet currents;    joule heating;    gas temperature;    mouse skin;    skin burns;   

DOI  :  10.3390/plasma6010009

学科分类：泌尿医学

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Low-temperature atmospheric-pressure plasma jets are generally considered a safe medical technology with no significant long-term side effects in clinical studies reported to date. However, there are studies emerging that show plasma jets can cause significant side effects in the form of skin burns under certain conditions. Therefore, with a view of developing safer plasma treatment approaches, in this study we have set out to provide new insights into the cause of these skin burns and how to tailor plasma treatments to mitigate these effects. We discovered that joule heating by the plasma bullet currents is responsible for creating skin burns during helium plasma jet treatment of live mice. These burns can be mitigated by treating the mice at a further distance so that the visible plasma plume does not contact the skin. Under these treatment conditions we also show that the plasma jet treatment still retains its medically beneficial property of producing reactive oxygen species in vivo. Therefore, treatment distance is an important parameter for consideration when assessing the safety of medical plasma treatments.

【 授权许可】

CC BY