Effect of Photodynamic Therapy on Photoaging and Skin Field Cancerization

Abstract

P hotoaging does not make a person look less beautiful but also it with increases the risk of developing cutaneous benign and malignant neoplasms. Treatment of photoaged skin includes photoprotection, medications and procedures to reverse existing damage. Topical photodynamic therapy (PDT) has shown to be effective for the treatment of several aspects of skin ageing which includes improvement of fine wrinkles, mottled hyperpigmentation, tactile roughness and sallowness. The use of PDT for skin rejuvenation and cosmetic purposes has become an alternative therapeutic option since dermatologists, in several structured studies demonstrating a broad fading of thin wrinkles and clearance of solar lentigines in the PDT-exposed perilesional skin. The study included 20 patients with photoaging (Grade I and II) using Glogau’s photoaging classification attending the Dermatology outpatient clinic of Ain Shams University Hospitals. Wrinkles on either side of patient’s face were treated with topical PDT using two different types of photosensitizers, ALA and liposome loaded MB. Each patient received two sessions. Skin biopsies were taken before intervention and 2 months after the second session to assess the degree of improvement. Clinical photographic assessment of patients’ improvement in grading score of their wrinkles; in both the ALA and MB treated side, five out of twenty patients (25%) showed improvement by two grades, nine patients showed improvement