Oral Mucositis Patients to Get Relief thanks to NASA Technology

The painful side effects in treatments of oral mucositis, radiation and chemotherapy treatments are significantly reduced thanks to a light based technology introduced in medicine. This technology has been developed originally to aid plant growth experiments on space shuttle missions.

According to a recent press release, the medical device called WARP75 has been developed by Quantum Devices for NASA. The primary aim of the device is to help with the healing of wounds. The device is not bigger than the palm of a hand, and it uses red and infrared technology and HEALS technology (High Emissivity Aluminiferous Luminescent Substrate).

The new device has been successfully used to treat the oral mucosity of cancer patients who have been going through stem cell or bone marrow transplantations. The clinical trial of the WARP75 has been primarily funded by the Innovative Partnerships Program at the Marshall Space Flight Center (NASA).

The study included:

• 20 cancer patients (from the Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin)
• 60 cancer patients (from the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital & Children’s Hospital of Alabama)

There were four study groups formed, 2 low risk groups and 2 high risk groups of patients. Of these:

• 1 low risk and 1 high risk group received treatment with the innovative WARP75 device
• 1 low risk and 1 high risk group have been exposed to receiving light from a device that is similar, but which does not have the therapeutic effects of the WARP75.

In the study, the low risk patients were those who tended to develop little oral mucositis, while the high-risk patients tended to develop more severe forms of oral mucositis.

During the study, nurses held the WARP75 device close to the cheek of the patient for 88 seconds, every day, during a period of 14 days. During all this period, patients had to fill in forms and indicate their level of pain.

As a conclusion, there is a 96% chance that the WARP75 device had a positive healing effect on the high risk patients. They have felt significantly less pain after having been treated with the device developed by NASA.

The device is actually a very inexpensive method of using it for therapy in patients with oral mucositis. This is a very important achievement, since mucositis symptoms are quite difficult to treat without having many negative side effects. With the new device, patients will:

• have a better overall morale
• be able to eat much easier, since the painful mouth and sore throat symptoms will get milder
• have to make use of less narcotics/ drugs in order to ale those terrible mouth and throat pains