Abstract
An animal study was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of the ultrasonic surgical aspirator in the treatment of Bowen's disease, a squamous cell carcinoma in situ. Surgical removal of Bowen's disease lesions is simple in most cases, but surgical treatment is difficult in patients with lesions that are large or are located in joint areas, hard-to-heal areas, or surgically problematic areas, such as the ears, nose, eyelids, and mucous membranes. It was thus thought that more effective treatment of such patients may be possible with the ultrasonic surgical aspirator because it is easy to use, allows removal of the epidermis while leaving the dermis intact, and is noninvasive. Lesions taken from patients suffering from Bowen's disease were grafted onto severe combined immunodef iciency (SCID) mice. These grafted areas were then treated with the ultrasonic surgical aspirator. None of the mice treated exhibited a recurrence of Bowen's disease during of a 4-month follow-up period, whereas histologic specimens taken 5 months after grafting from a control animal that had not been treated with the aspirator showed classic Bowen's disease. The ultrasonic surgical aspirator was also found to break down the epidermis up to the hair follicle in normal human scalp skin, a finding that suggests it would completely remove Bowen's disease lesions. The results of this study indicate that this aspirator would be effective in the treatment of Bowen's disease. Clinical study is currently ongoing to verify the device's effectiveness.
