Photodynamic therapy in treatment of oral lichen planus

Oral lichen planus (OLP) is a relatively common chronic immunologic mucocutaneous disorder. Although there are many presenting treatments, some of them proved its failure. Recently, the use of photodynamic therapy (PDT) has been expanding due to its numerous advantages, as it is safe, convenient, and non-invasive and has toxic effect towards selective tissues. This article provides comprehensive review on OLP, its etiology, clinical features and recent non-pharmacological treatments. We also describe the topical PDT and its mechanisms. Our purpose was to evaluate the efficacy of PDT in treatment of OLP through collecting the data of the related clinical studies. We searched in PubMed website for the clinical studies that were reported from 2000 to 2014 using specific keywords: "photodynamic therapy" and "treatment of oral lichen planus". Inclusion criteria were English publications only were concerned. In the selected studies of photodynamic treatment, adult patients (more than 20 years) were conducted and the OLP lesions were clinically and histologically confirmed. Exclusion criteria were classical and pharmacological treatments of OLP were excluded and also the using of PDT on skin lesions of lichen planus. We established five clinical studies in this review where all of them reported improvement and effectiveness of PDT in treatment of OLP lesions. The main outcome of comparing the related clinical studies is that the photodynamic is considered as a safe, effective and promising treatment modality for OLP.