Diagnosing diseases by measurement of electrical skin resistance: A novel technique

Diagnostic screening tools based on neuroreflexology have been recently developed. Such techniques are based on the rationale that measurement of electrical skin resistance of specific dermal zones reflects pathology in the corresponding internal organs. We have approached this disputable field with the aim of putting evidence-based medicine techniques into use in order to evaluate the reliability of this method. Our first report on such a device (Medex Screen, Omer, Israel) described the results obtained by blind assessment of patients in an Internal Medicine department suffering from a heterogeneous group of diseases. In 150 patients a good correlation was found between the clinical diagnosis and the results of the measurement of skin resistance with a high sensitivity (>70%) measured for cardiovascular, respiratory, gastrointestinal and genitourinary diseases. The technique was also found to diagnose immunological diseases (autoimmune and allergic disorders) in 108 patients. Another study demonstrated the ability of the Medex-Test device to detect with high accuracy the presence of liver disorders and to determine the necroinflammatory grade. A fourth study performed on 125 cancer patients compared Medex-Test with the conventional diagnosis and found a high sensitivity (>75%) and a high specificity of (>90%) for lung, breast and prostate cancer. We conclude that although the exact mechanism is not entirely clear, measuring electrical skin resistance of dermal zones has the potential to serve as a diagnostic tool for inner organ pathologies.