A prospective evaluation of the efficacy of topical adhesive pads for the reduction of facial rhytids.

Objective: To determine the efficacy of an over-the-counter topical skin adhesive pad for reducing central forehead and glabellar rhytids over a 4-week period.

Design: Prospective series involving 30 healthy volunteers with central forehead and glabellar rhytids at a tertiary care academic medical center. The participants used topical skin adhesive pads over the central forehead area and the glabella for 4 weeks in an effort to reduce rhytids. Before and after treatment, the participants had facial photographs taken and completed a questionnaire assessing the severity of their rhytids. Blinded to the timing of the photographs, 2 independent facial plastic surgeons scored the pretreatment and posttreatment rhytid severity using the Glogau scale (1-4) and a wrinkle severity scale (1-10) to evaluate treatment effect.

Results: Twenty-six participants (87%) completed follow-up with an average of 7.4 hours of use of the topical adhesive pads per night. The independent evaluators found minimal improvements in the Glogau scores (mean [SD], 0.12 [0.33] [P = .08] and 0.06 [0.22] [P = .18] for the central forehead area and the glabella, respectively). The same evaluators also found minimal change in the wrinkle severity scores (mean [SD], 0.21 [1.28] [P = .41] and 0.25 [0.75] [P = .10] out of 10 for central forehead rhytids and glabellar rhytids, respectively). None of these measures were statistically significant. The study participants' self-evaluations demonstrated changes in the wrinkle severity scores of 0.35 (2.10) (P = .41) in the central forehead area and 0.73 (1.7) (P = .04) in the glabella.

Conclusions: Subjective self-evaluation of topical adhesive pads demonstrates improvement in glabellar rhytids but may be affected by bias. Independent, blinded evaluation by facial plastic surgeons showed no statistical benefit in the reduction of rhytids in the central forehead area or the glabella.