A recent study published in Dermatology evaluated the efficacy and recurrence of photodynamic therapy or other topical treatments – 5-fluorouracil, cryotherapy, photodynamic therapy alone or in combination with other therapies – ablative fractional CO₂ laser or plum-blossom needle, for the treatment of Bowen’s disease.

In this meta-analysis, 8 randomized controlled trials were selected from PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science and Cochrane Library databases.

The results revealed that photodynamic therapy exhibited a significantly higher complete response rate; less recurrence and better cosmetic outcome compared with other treatments. Additionally, photodynamic therapy combined with ablative fractional CO2 laser or plum-blossom needle also showed significantly less recurrence and a lower visual analog scale score than photodynamic therapy alone. Whereas, there was no significant difference in the complete response rate between photodynamic therapy combined with ablative continuous CO₂ laser and photodynamic therapy plus ablative fractional CO₂ laser.

It was inferred that photodynamic therapy can be used Bowen’s disease and confer better efficacy, less recurrence and better cosmetic outcomes than cryotherapy and 5-fluorouracil. Certain modalities, including ablative fractional CO₂ laser, can be applied in conjunction with photodynamic therapy to improve efficacy. It is yet to be determined which laser-assisted photodynamic therapy scheme has the most advantages in the treatment of Bowen’s disease.

Source: Dermatology. 2021 Oct 15;1-9.