Vitiligo treatments

Westville Hospital offers a wide range of treatments for vitiligo including phototherapy, excimer light, medical and surgical therapies.

The following topical treatments are available:

Stocked in practice:

Available on prescription from a pharmacy:

Narrow band UVB

Used for extensive areas of vitiligo

Treatment is performed 3 times a week - Mon, Wed, Fri.

Many months of treatment is required.

Excimer light is used for limited areas of vitiligo.

It is a form of targeted treatment, treating only involved areas and sparing the normal skin.

Excellent repigmentation is seen with this form of treatment.

The practice has just acquired a state of the art Excimer Light from Germany.

The donor site (usually the thigh) is cleaned with hibitane.

The site is injected with local anaesthetic

A very thin piece of skin is removed and soaked in trypsin (an enzyme that digests protein) for one hour in an incubator

After one hour, the piece of skin is removed from trypsin and washed. The melanocytes are then scraped off the piece of skin.

The resulting fluid is centrifuged

The melanocytes gravitate to the bottom of the test tube.

Surplus fluid is removed from the test tube leaving a melanocyte rich fluid behind.

The vitiligo skin is denuded with a microdermabrader.

The melanocyte rich fluid is transferred to the denuded vitiligo skin.

The site is dressed and left undisturbed for a week.

Pigment cells slowly populate the area and depigment the vitiligo skin.

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