Yes! In the largest study to date, over 60,000 patients with vitiligo who were treated with NB-UVB did not have an increased incidence of skin cancer.

Phototherapy treatments are typically administered three times per week. For psoriasis, for example, improvement is seen as early as two weeks, but most people need at least 15 to 20 treatments to achieve clearance.

Phototherapy is started at a low dosage in order to prevent burning. During phototherapy treatment, your skin becomes accustomed to the dose of NB-UVB energy given and the dosage can be safely increased. Skin healing and disease clearance occur at a certain higher dosage, which is different for different skin conditions, skin types, and body areas. Our highly experienced phototherapy team creates an individualized treatment plan and continuously assesses each patient’s response to determine the best outcome.

Once your skin is healed, we recommend maintenance therapy. This involves a plan to reduce treatment dose or frequency. The goal is to maintain your results but decrease the number of phototherapy sessions per week. It is important to note that different changes in our lives (i.e. stress, illness, trauma, or childbirth) can cause the immune system in our skin to become overactive again and make the skin condition flare. In this case, more active treatment with increased light therapy dose and frequency is often temporarily needed.

The affected skin must first be coated with the special medication (KERASTICK). As the patient waits for a pre-determined period of time, the medicine is absorbed into the skin and selectively taken up by the pre-cancer cells. The amount of time a patient needs to wait for the medicine to be absorbed depends on the area being treated and ranges from 1 to 3 hours. The patient is then placed under a specialized light, which activates the medication and destroys the pre-cancer cells.

– Extremely effective at treating actinic keratosis
– Little-to-no risk of scarring
– It is not invasive
– Takes a short time and is done in the office
– Can precisely treat an entire area, including pre-cancers that are visible on the skin and those that have not yet appeared
– Can be repeated many times at the same site if needed

The doctor will first cleanse the skin with acetone, which removes surface oil and allows for deeper penetration of the medication. The medication is then applied to the affected skin and allowed to dry. Depending on the treatment area, the patient will wait for 1 to 3 hours while the medication is absorbed into the precancerous cells. After this period, the patient will be treated with blue light, which activates the medication. PDT treatment is not painful. Patients can experience slight discomfort or warmth while under the blue light.

Patients will be sent home with sunblock and detailed aftercare instructions. Patients often experience symptoms similar to sunburn, including redness for several days after the treatment followed by superficial peeling that can last up to one week. For patients that have a lot of sun damage, there may be more significant discomfort in the treated areas during this time. Because the medication can remain active in the skin for up to 48 hours, we recommend wearing a hat when outdoors avoiding prolonged sunlight or fluorescent light exposure for that time.