[Photodynamic therapy of centrally located early-stage lung cancer]

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) with photofrin II and excimer dye laser has an excellent effect on patients (pts) with centrally located early-stage lung cancer with a limited tumor length of 1 cm or less and a clearly visible tumor margin. Further, to expand the therapeutic area of PDT to these early-stage lung cancers, it is necessary to exploit more powerful laser equipment and more sensitive sensitizers. Also, it is essential in the decision to treat early-stage lung cancer to evaluate whether PDT can be used as an effective alternative therapy to surgery in patients with operable centrally located early-stage lung cancer. Finally, it is an important issue for the treatment of centrally located early-stage lung cancer to determine which therapeutic modalities have to be selected as the initial choice in endoscopic therapy.