Squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) lesions are potentially metastatic and can be life threatening. Hence, surgical excision is the standard treatment for cutaneous SCC. However, some patients are ineligible for surgery because of their poor general health, concomitant anticoagulant or immunosuppressive therapies, or allergy to local anesthetics.~Photodynamic therapy (PDT) with methylaminolevulinate (MAL) is an innovative treatment modality that has been approved in Europe for the treatment of actinic keratosis, basal cell carcinoma, and Bowen's disease. However, currently, there is insufficient evidence to support the routine use of topical PDT for SCC.~Ablative fractional laser (AFL) ablates the epidermis and dermis without significant thermal injury, creating microscopic ablation zones in the portion of the skin that the laser is applied to. Our previous studies showed that AFL-primed MAL-PDT (AFL-PDT) offered a higher efficacy than conventional MAL-PDT in the treatment of many other diseases, such as actinic keratosis, actinic cheilitis, and Bowen's disease.~Investigators recruited Korean patients with microinvasive SCC and compared the efficacy, recurrence rate, and cosmetic outcomes of AFL-PDT with those of standard MAL-PDT.
Surgical excision is the standard treatment for cutaneous SCC. However, many patients diagnosed with SCC are elderly and ineligible for surgery. Ablative fractional laser- assisted photodynamic therapy (AFL-PDT) offered a higher efficacy than conventional Methylaminolevulinate (MAL)-PDT.