Photodynamic Therapy Treatment For Acne

The most evolving treatment, also the most revolutionary of treatments available nowadays for acne, is photodynamic therapy. I feel very strongly about photodynamic therapy. In my opinion, it can in many instances replace the need for oral antibiotics, that are unnecessarily given for long periods of time. It is very, very similar in results to isotretinoin or Accutane without the need to exposure of chemicals that some people may be very fearful of.

Photodynamic therapy works by incorporating a medicine, a substance called levulinic acid into our oil glands. It is then activated by red light and blue light, and that particular activation causes destruction of the oil glands - not of all oil glands at the same time, but of a number of oil glands. Often times it results perhaps in shrinkage of some oil glands first before it can completely eradicate that oil gland, but that turns off the acne. And don't worry, we have plenty of oil glands on our face and we really don't need all of them.

So, we apply this medicine on a cleansed face. We then let it sit on the skin to be able to move it into the oil glands for approximately an hour or two, sometimes longer than that sometimes less than that, it depends a little bit on the characteristics of your skin. And then we'll expose your skin to the light source after that. And the light source that the aminolevulinic acid is most receptive to is blue light. However, red light seems to also have quite some activation power, and so often times we combine it with red light as well. At the end of the treatment, you leave the office covered with sunscreen and often times even a sun-protective hat if it was performed on the face. The sun protection has to consist of either zinc oxide or titanium dioxide.

It is crucial to avoid the exposure to visible light for 42 hours after the treatment and that is to avoid that there's further activation of the medicine that still remains in your oil glands. What you can expect of the next few days, and that may already start on the day of the treatment, is redness and swelling. By about day three, the skin will feel very, very tight, and by about day four that tight skin will start shedding off.

There are some people who get more pronounced reaction and may have some redness, to a certain degree, for up to ten days in their skin. Some may even get very pronounced swelling. That is a subset of our patients, it certainly doesn't effect everybody and most of the time it goes very, very straightforward.

It is oftentimes a series of four to six that are spaced anywhere between two to four weeks apart that gives the best possible results. And those results can, in the majority of all patients treated, results in complete eradication of the acne. So what's the success rate? About 75 percent of people who are treated with 4 to 6 treatments of photodynamic therapy will be rid of their acne by completion of the treatment.