Photodynamic Therapy for Skin Cancer

When it comes to cancer treatments one thing you can say is that there are always new things being tried. Researchers are finding and developing new methods to try to combat this very serious disease. With skin cancer it’s no different. There are many treatments to choose from and not all of them are the standard surgical removal followed by radiation or chemotherapies. One of these treatments is called Photodynamic therapy, PDT.

The Photodynamic Therapy Procedure

This procedure is done as an outpatient, which means the patient does not have to be admitted into a hospital to have this done. The patient is injected with a drug that is light activated. This drug goes after the cancer cells.

Between twenty-four and forty eight hours later the patient returns for the second part of the treatment. In this session a laser light in shone on the tumor cells. This directs a particular range of non-thermal red light into the skin cancer cells. This activates the drug and allows it to do the job it was injected for; fight the cancer cells. It fights them without touching the healthy cells. This treatment is also preformed with a cream instead of being injected. The patient has the photodynamic therapy several hours later.

Side Affects of Photodynamic Therapy

This method is easier on the patient then many others, has very few side effects and good results. There can be a little general body swelling. As well, for a month after the treatment the patient’s eyes and skin will be extra sensitive to sunlight. They must also be careful for the same period of time when outside in sunlight. That means wearing sunscreen, covering up with long sleeves, a hat and sunglasses.

Benefits of Photodynamic Therapy

The benefits to this therapy are several. First it requires only a minimal number of treatments. No more than three are necessary. The photodynamic therapy will treat the whole area and so there is little chance of missing any of the cancerous cells that it is trying to kill. There is very little if any scarring when the treatment is completed. Another benefit of this treatment is it’s relatively low cost.

It is so successful that many doctors feel that over time it will become available in the dermatologist’s offices instead of as an outpatient through hospitals or cancer clinics. Some doctors smile when they tell you of the results, claiming that when doing follow-up visits they need to get photographs from their files to show them where the skin cancer was because they are unable to tell otherwise.

DT has only recently been available to the public, but with tremendous success. It was as recently as the middle 1990s that they were still getting approvals for the drugs used. But now that this has all passed and the treatment of skin cancer is meeting with an almost overwhelming success rate this therapy is being tried on other types of cancers and having similar success rates. Gastrointestinal cancer, as well as pancreatic cancer, is showing positive results with more success to come.