Treatment of oral lichen planus using 308-nm excimer laser

Abstract

Oral lichen planus (OLP) is a chronic inflammatory disease, has prolonged courses, repeated attacks and resistance to treatment. The traditional narrow spectrum UVB treatment has an established efficacy on skin lichen planus, and high safety. However, most of ultraviolet phototherapy devices have a huge volume, thereby cannot be used in the treatment of OLP. Lymphocytic infiltration is evident in the lesions of lichen planus, and the direct irradiation of 308-nm excimer laser can induce apoptosis of the T lymphocytes in skin lesions, thereby has a unique therapeutic effect on the diseases involving T lymphocytes. This study aims to investigate the efficacy of 308-nm excimer laser in the treatment of OLP. A total of six OLP patients were enrolled into this study, and further pathological diagnosis was conducted, then 308-nm excimer laser was used in the treatment. The efficacy of 308-nm excimer laser in the treatment of OLP was satisfactory. The clinical symptoms of five patients were significantly improved. In two patients, the erosion surface based on congestion and the surrounding white spots completely disappeared, and clinical recovery was achieved. Three patients achieved partial remission, that is, the erosion surface healed, congestion and white spot area shrunk by more than 1/2 of the primary skin lesions. In the remaining one patient, the erosion surface had not completely healed after treatment, and congestion and white spot area shrunk by less than 1/2 of the primary skin lesions. Only one patients had developed mild pain during the treatment, and this symptom alleviated by itself. The 308-nm excimer laser therapy can serve as a safe and effective treatment for OLP.

White, red, and mixed lesions of oral mucosa: A clinicopathologic approach to diagnosis

“…More recently, 308‐nm excimer laser therapy has been shown to be a safe and effective treatment for erosive oral lichen planus. This can induce apoptosis of the T lymphocytes in skin and mucosal lesions, thereby having a unique therapeutic effect on a range of diseases involving T lymphocytes . A systematic review found low‐level laser therapy as a potential treatment strategy for the treatment of oral lichen planus .…”

Photobiomodulation of gingival lesions resulting from autoimmune diseases: systematic review and meta-analysis

“…Therefore, a total of 47 articles were selected for thorough full-text reading. After full-text screening, 17 of the 47 studies were included in the current review [9,14,[35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47] and 30 were excluded. The reasons for excluding these articles can be seen in the study identification flowchart according to PRISMA (Fig.…”

“…Seventeen published articles were included in the qualitative evaluation [9,14,30,[35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48], for a total of 239 patients with oral lesions resulting from autoimmune diseases. Type of study, number, mean age and sex of the subjects, diagnosis, as well as the diagnostic method used, follow-up period, evaluation methods, and main outcomes can be seen in Tables 1 and 2.…”

“…With regard to studies with no comparative groups (13 papers), PBM was effective over time of follow-up on all of them [9,14,15,30,36,38,40,41,43,[45][46][47][48]. In 11 studies (84.6%), the laser was applied singly and in 2 studies (15.4%), it was used concurrently with steroid therapy (Table 1).…”

Learning from clinical phenotypes: Low‐dose biophotonics therapies in oral diseases

“…An association with specific drugs or systemic disorders is well documented, as is its predilection for premalignant transformation (Scully & el-Kom, 1985). There have been many attempts at direct ablation or targeting immune cells in OLP with surgical or excimer lasers, but these have shown limited benefits (de -Junior, Aciole, Santos, dos Santos, & Pinheiro, 2011;Liu, Sun, Yang, & Wang, 2017;Mucke et al, 2015;Trehan & Taylor, 2004). Interestingly, despite any direct correlation of a microbiological aspects in its etiopathology, there are clinical reports on efficacy of aPDT in OLP patients.…”