A Review on Therapeutic Potential of Cold Atmospheric Plasma Therapy in Oral Cancer: Emerging Trends and Amelioration

Abstract

Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma (OSCC) is a life-threatening disease. Many patients are in advanced stages at the time of diagnosis, resulting in high mortality and morbidity and clinical problems that make clinical management challenging. Due to advancements in early diagnostic procedures of cancer and its treatment, the number of patients suffering from OSCC has decreased. Still, the number of death due to cancer has not been reduced. In many circumstances, chemotherapy has major side-effects. Cold Atmospheric pressure Plasma (CAP) is a new therapy option that seems to be used mostly as part of a palliative cancer treatment program to provide comfort to these patients. Using a gas that is ionised partially, known as CAP therapy, researchers are now able to treat cancer. The identification of the anticancer properties of CAP, and clinical efficacy, can open up the door for the development of a wide range of synergistic and individualised plasma-enabled therapies. These drugs can potentially enhance current therapies in the direction of safer, more efficient treatment modalities and provide a gentle but efficacious cancer single-agent therapy with a wide therapeutic window and good selectivity.

Keywords

• cold plasma
• oral squamous cell carcinoma
• palliative therapy
• partially ionised plasma
• thermal ionised plasma