Description of Peripheral Blood Perfusion by Laser Speckle Contrast Analysis (LASCA) in 'Early' versus 'Clinically Overt' Systemic Sclerosis in Routine Clinics

Objective: To investigate in an unselected, systemic sclerosis (SSc) cohort if baseline laser speckle contrast analysis (LASCA) peripheral blood perfusion (PBP) measurements differ between 'early' SSc (without skin involvement, or 'limited' SSc-LSSc) and 'clinically overt' SSc (with skin involvement, limited cutaneous SSc-LcSSc and diffuse cutaneous SSc-DcSSc) in routine setting.

Methods: A group of twenty consecutive 'early' SSc patients and forty consecutive 'clinically overt' SSc patients (twenty LcSSc and twenty DcSSc) underwent clinical and LASCA examinations (to assess the peripheral blood perfusion [PBP] of both hands volar).

Results: No statistically significant difference in adjusted PBP was found in the 'early' versus the 'clinically overt' group (p = 0.77) when adjusted for possible confounding factors (e.g., vasoactive medication, active smoking, history of DTL and disease duration). A wide variability was noted when observing the individual datapoints of each subset.

Conclusion: This study with an unselected SSc population in daily routine, non-research setting, showed there was no difference in adjusted PBP at baseline between 'early' SSc and 'clinically overt' SSc when corrected for possible confounding factors. Interestingly a wide variation of individual datapoints were observed in each subset, which emphasizes the heterogeneity of SSc.