Review Article
An Evidence Scoping Review of Photodynamic Therapy (PDT) in the Treatment of Cancers
Devidas Menon* and Tania Stafinski
Department of Public Health Sciences, School of Public Health, University of Alberta, 3032 Research Transition Facility, 8308 114 Street, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2V2 780-492-9080, Canada
- *Corresponding Author:
- Devidas Menon
Professor and Interim Chair
Department of Public Health Sciences
School of Public Health University of Alberta
3032 Research Transition Facility, 8308 114 Street
Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2V2 780- 492-9080, Canada
E-mail: menon@ualberta.ca
Received date: June 27, 2011; Accepted date: Agust 28, 2011; Published date: September 24, 2011
Citation: Menon D, Stafinski T (2011) An Evidence Scoping Review of Photodynamic Therapy (PDT) in the Treatment of Cancers. J Anal Bioanal Tech S1:002. doi: 10.4172/2155-9872.S1-002
Copyright: © 2011 Menon D. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
In this invited paper, we applied standard methods of evidence synthesis and critical appraisal to summarize the current state of clinical evidence on PDT for the treatment of different types of cancers. A total of 266 studies spanning 11,427 patients and 34 different types of cancer were reviewed. Forty-four were comparative and 222 were non-comparative. The majority of comparative studies did not assess PDT versus conventional therapy. Therefore, it was not possible to determine the incremental benefit of treatment with PDT. Most of the non-comparative studies involved small, mixed patient populations and short follow-up periods. Consequently, the quality of evidence accumulated to date was considered to be low. Well-defined, prospective, comparative trials of PDT, alone, versus conventional therapies are needed in order to determine its clinical effectiveness.
