The Radical Skin Status Factor RSF – An Universal Indicator for the Classification of Skin Changes

The classification of skin is a vital necessity for the evaluation of the effect of different skin care products and skin treatments. World demographics continue to evolve and diversify at unprecedented levels. With this growth and mixing of ethnicities come significant changes in the composition of world skin types (1). It is becoming increasingly aware that the world composition includes many variations and combinations of skin types. To date, the medical community has lacked a comprehensive system to classify and communicate the dynamic skin typing of all global people in a clear and reproducible fashion. There is an important medical need to determine the skin effects of insult, injury, and inflammation (i/i/i). There is also a need to assess the likelihood of i/i/i effects occurring in a skin type, document this in the medical literature, and communicate potential effects to patients. To answer these needs, an industry standard is required for skin type classification upon which to facilitate study designs and the reporting of data. Corresponding to this necessity various scales of skin classification were proposed.