Question:
I am preparing a lecture on early diagnosis of skin cancer
with lasers. I have already found some papers but I am still
searching for some physicians who have experience of the
technique. Has anybody experience with this topic or could
tell me who is engaged in this field?
Answer:
(I assume you mean by fluorescence spectroscopy)is a very complicated and conentious
subject.
A number of centres have reported their ability to detect 'abnormal' fluorescence
signals from a variety of diseased tissue, e.g. atherosclerosis and early mucosal
cancers. The application of these methods to skin cancers seemed initially very
promising but has proved to be very difficult. The administration of exogenous
fluorescent dyes has achieved some success for example in the bronchus but with
significant prolonged skin photosensitivity. Approaches based upon the detection of
abnormal distributions of endrogenous fluorophores have proved difficult to reproduce
and some results have been misleading.
There is a large colaberation between the Laser Biology Research Laboratory, Anderson
Cancer Centre, Houston, Texas and the Laser Centre, Academic Medical Centre in Amsterdam,
Netherlands, who you may like to contact.
Here in Leeds we are doing alot of work on the fluorescnece properties of tissues undergoing
Photodynamic Therapy I would be pleased to suppy any information and references etc that
I can.
