Laser Light Therapy Seen As “Magic Bullet” For Treating Some Throat And Oral Cancers
3/1/2003 Maryland University Of Maryland Medical Center Photodynamic therapy, which uses a red laser and a light-sensitive drug to destroy cancer cells without harming normal tissue, represents a promising new treatment option for patients with throat or oral cancers, according to a voice and swallowing specialist at the University of Maryland Medical Center. “It’s as close to a magic bullet as you can get to kill cancers that are close to the surface,” says Paul F. Castellanos, M.D., an otolaryngologist/head and neck surgeon who has treated a dozen patients with the minimally invasive laser light therapy in the past 18 months. Nine of those patients had throat cancer, and three had oral cancer. “Photodynamic therapy is the only thing that kills the cancerous tissue and the precancerous tissue, but not the normal tissue,” says Dr. Castellanos, who is also an assistant professor of surgery at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. “We are very excited about this new frontier in the treatment of these kinds of cancers and premalignancies.” Before patients receive the therapy, they are given an intravenous injection of a light-sensitive drug called porfimer sodium, which passes through normal cells but collects in cancerous and precancerous cells. Two or three days after the injection, doctors expose those areas to a red laser, causing a chemical reaction that destroys the diseased cells. Other lasers kill cancer cells with heat—vaporizing or cutting out tumors, along with a portion of the surrounding healthy tissue. In photodynamic therapy, the red laser’s [...]