Low-intensity laser-assisted antimicrobial photodynamic therapy and intravascular laser irradiation of blood in oncology: systematic review and a brief report

Oncological patients may present with difficult-to-resolve oral lesions that impair their quality of life, and laser therapy can help these patients. This study sought to present a systematic review of the use of intravascular laser irradiation of blood (ILIB) and antimicrobial photodynamic therapy (aPDT) for oncological patients. Furthermore, it provides a brief report on a patient with laryngeal cancer who experienced cytotoxic symptoms such as oral mucositis and oral candidiasis while receiving aPDT and ILIB. A systematic search of PubMed, Scopus, Embase, Cochrane, Lilacs, Web of Science, Scielo, and Gray Literature was conducted, with no year or language restrictions, for primary clinical studies that used ILIB and aPDT to treat oral manifestations in oncological patients. In the brief report, aPDT was administered within the first five days, and ILIB was used for persistent lesions and pain. The review included five clinical studies. They included case reports, retrospective studies, randomized clinical trials, and non-randomized clinical trials. ILIB therapy combined with aPDT has been shown to reduce pain and promote faster healing when compared to not using ILIB. In our brief clinical case, healing was accelerated while pain and infectious inflammatory processes were reduced in the oral cavity. This neutralization of oral toxicity by combining aPDT and ILIB improved overall health, resulting in rapid healing of the oral lesions. The combination of aPDT and ILIB may be an effective therapy for the rapid recovery of oral lesions among cancer patients. More research is needed to better understand the effects of ILIB in oncology patients.