OBJECTIVES

: Oncological diseases are one of the leading causes of death in the world. Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is one of the methods of treatment of oncological diseases. It has existed for more than 20 years in Russia. The purpose of our study was to review clinical evidence of the effectiveness of PDT in the treatment of cancer.

METHODS

: A search for clinical trials was carried out in PubMed database and Cochrane Library in September-December 2017. Studies were included in the review if they described cancer treatment with PDT, and if the designs of study were randomized clinical trials, meta-analyzes, systematic reviews, and cohort studies. Studies were excluded if they described PDT as a diagnostic method, if treatment of precancerous diseases, if the design of the study was inappropriate, if we did not have access to full-text sources. Assessment of methodological quality in this study was not carried out.

RESULTS

: We found 3296 publications, 3133 publications were excluded. 163 clinical trials meet the inclusion criteria. The analysis showed heterogeneous results. Evidence of the effectiveness of PDT in adult patients was found for lung cancer, basal cell and squamous cell carcinoma of the skin, pleural mesothelioma, esophageal cancer, cholangiocellular carcinoma. No studies of the efficacy of PDT in oncological diseases in children have been found.

CONCLUSIONS

: PDT can be useful to patients avoiding surgical treatment, palliative and elderly patients, as well as concerned cosmetic results. It is necessary to continue searching for new evidence of the effectiveness of this area of therapy, especially for rare types of tumors.