Making Sense of Skin Color in Clinical Care

Abstract

The background of this article is that assessment and quantification of skin color is important to health care; color is one indicator of overall health and is linked to oxygenation, tissue perfusion, nutritional status, and injury. The purpose is to describe how skin color varies across racial/ethnic groups so that the information can be applied to clinical practice. The method used is cross-sectional, descriptive design (n = 257). We recorded self-defined race/ethnicity and used a spectrophotometer to measure skin color at two anatomic sites. Skin color variables included L* (light/dark), a* (red/green), and b* (yellow/blue). As regards results, we found significant differences in L*, a*, and b* values by site and race/ethnicity in White, Asian, and Biracial participants. L*: F(3, 233) = 139.04, p < .01 and F(3, 233) = 118.47, p < .01. Black participants had significantly lower mean L* values and wider ranges of L*, a*, and b* as compared with other groups. In regard to application, these findings suggest that clinicians and researchers should plan and provide care based on skin color, rather than race/ethnicity.

What Color is My Arm? Changes in Skin Color of an Embodied Virtual Arm Modulates Pain Threshold

“…Seeing a blue arm instead would mean that a “cooling” of the skin is taking place, thus contrasting with the heating of the thermode and so yielding a higher pain threshold. In fact, when the body is exposed to different temperatures it reacts with thermoregulation through superficial vasodilation when it’s hot, or vasoconstriction when it’s cold; this in turn brings the tissues to be highly or poorly oxygenated by hemoglobin, which renders the skin red or blue (cyanotic), respectively (Hirschmann and Raugi, 2009; Everett et al, 2012). …”

Research Techniques Made Simple: Cutaneous Colorimetry: A Reliable Technique for Objective Skin Color Measurement

“…The 1976 CIELAB measurements are found to correlate to skin color and related parameters, such as erythema (Brainard and Stockman, 2010;Del Bino and Bernerd, 2013;Everett et al, 2012). The CIELAB, or CIE L* a* b*, system is a threedimensional color-space consisting of three axes (Figure 1).…”

A validation study of scar vascularity and pigmentation assessment using dermoscopy

“…One worldwide accepted objective measurement approach for scar colour is spectrophotometry, which interprets the colour of the scar in terms of redness, lightness and yellowness [6,7]. There are many types and models of instruments based on this approach, and many have been proved to be useful and reliable in measuring skin or scar colour in clinical and research settings [8,9]. One type of such instruments-the spectrocolorimeter, has also been validated in our previous study in the measurement of scar colour, which included information for pigmentation and vascularity [5].…”