Photochemotherapy of hypervascular dermal lesions: a possible alternative to photothermal therapy?

Continued improvement in the results of laser treatment of port wine stain, with reduction in scarring, will depend on the ability to use lasers to induce selective injury of only the abnormal blood vessels in the dermis while sparing the normal overlying epidermis. Photodynamic therapy, using an exogenous photosensitizing drug specifically activated by certain wavelengths of light, may be used to destroy selectively certain targets in biological systems. The current study demonstrates, in the chicken comb model, that photochemotherapy can be used to treat hypervascular dermal lesions while leaving the normal overlying epidermis completely intact.