Treatment of Atopic Dermatitis by Low Power Laser

Takao Igarashi, MD, president of The Ikarashi Pediatrics Allergy Clinic.

LaserWorld Guest Editorial, 3 1999.

The development of laser medicine is marvelous and widely used in such ways as laser knifes, the laser coagulation in ophthalmology, the blotch removal in dermatology, the PDT for the treatment of carcinoma and the resolution of pain and inflammation.
Recently we found that the irradiation of very weak laser light, with output between a few mW and several tens of mW to the affected part of atopic dermatitis (AD), had the effect of suppressing itching sensation and that the continuation of laser therapy could heal the AD itself.
As the effect of low power laser irradiation to suppress the itching sensation continued for 3 to 5 days, parents were very satisfied, saying that their children started to sleep well during nights and that they could reduce the usage of the steroid paste.

Although it is almost 5 years since we started Low Power Laser Therapy in our clinic, treating more than 200 patients, we have never experienced any adverse effects and at present we continue to treat 20 to 30 patients with LPL every day.

In this sense we can recommend this therapy to anybody who suffers from AD. As the LPL instrument, we use FLAT-10 produced by Fuji Electric (wavelength: 780nm, output:10mW). The irradiation starts from the most itching part, selecting 4 points diagonally from the periphery of the diseased part. The irradiation time is 10 seconds for each point and 40 seconds in total for each diseased part.
The total irradiation time for one patient is limited within 10 minutes and the treatment is repeated 1 to 2 times a week. The result of our study, selecting 14 patients of AD (middle and serious cases), between 1 and 18 years old, treated more than 20 times with LPL and continued observation for 2 to 14 months, is summarized as below.

(1) The dermatitis was improved in 10 of the14 cases.(71%)
(2) The number of treatments until improvement of dermatitis was achieved was 6 to 87 times. In 7 of the10 cases of which dermatitis was improved, the number of treatments was 10 to 20 times.
(3) The number of days until improvement of dermatitis was achieved was 14 to 210. 6 of the 10 cases in which dermatitis was improved were improved within 3 months. Based upon the above results we concluded that the LPL therapy was effective to AD and started to recommend it to parents of patients. However, the Health Insurance is only applied to the pain relief and the alleviation of inflammation and not to AD in Japan. We hope that the application of the Health Insurance to AD will be realized in the near future