Successful Treatment of Superficial Cutaneous Malignant Neoplasms with Photodynamic Therapy (PDT) Using Light-Emitting Diode (LED) Light Source

Abstract

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is an established therapy for superficial skin cancers, however, laser apparatus used in previous reports in Japan were not affordable, not portable, not accessible and not flexible, and therefore, the method with laser apparatus is not ubiquitous. In our study, we adopted small, cheap and portable Light-Emitting Diode (LED) light source, with which we tried to treat 11 cases of non-melanoma skin cancers (NMSCs). All cases of actinic keratoses (AK) were well reactive to our method with LED light source. However, in two cases of extra-mammary Paget’s disease and one case of squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), they were reactive or seemed to be reactive at first, but soon tumour cells regrowth was histologically detected.
PDT using this apparatus has proved effective in the treatment of NMSCs, it appears to become one of the routine treatments of these skin cancers.