Early Pulsed Dye Laser Treatment for Infantile Hemangiomas: An Open Study for 50 Japanese Infancies

Infantile hemangiomas, occurring at birth or during the first weeks of life, are benign vascular tumors with an initial proliferative phase and a later involutional phase. The massive proliferation on the key regions and unpredicted regression may threaten life. Thus, early management of infantile hemangiomas is necessary for affected infancies. Recent studies showed that propranolol for infantile hemangiomas had high efficacy for disappearance or reduction of infantile hemangiomas. However, a most recent study demonstrated existence of propranolol-resistant infantile hemangiomas. Therefore, we retrospectively evaluated efficacy of established early pulsed dye laser treatment for infantile hemangiomas in the 50 Japanese infancies which were applied in the period from 2000 to 2005, because our series included from the plaque subtype to the more proliferative tumor subtype. High efficacy in both subtypes suggests that early pulsed dye laser treatment can still be included as the first option for the mixed type of infantile hemangiomas and that pulsed dye laser treatment may be useful as the second line for the propranolol-resistant mixed type of infantile hemangiomas.