A study looking at laser therapy for people with head and neck cancer who have mouth sores (LiTEFORM)

The team had hoped to find 380 people to take part. 87 people joined the trial. It was difficult to find enough people to take part. Of those that did:

• 44 had low level laser therapy to the mouth 
• 43 had the inactive laser to the mouth 

Neither those taking part nor the hospital staff knew which laser was being used.

Mouth pain questionnaires 
The team used questionnaires during the study to assess mouth pain. People filled them in once a week during and after radiotherapy. The questionnaires asked about how people felt and if they had pain or difficulty swallowing.

The main timepoint the team looked at was 6 weeks after radiotherapy started. They used a score to measure how much mouth pain people had. Higher scores meant more mouth pain. Lower scores meant less mouth pain.

On average, the scores were:

• 33 out of 54 in the low level laser group
• 28 out of 54 in the inactive laser group 

The research team cannot say for sure that the differences in these results are down to the different treatments. This is because of the small number of people who took part. The difference in results could be due to chance.

Other findings
The team also found: 

• some people found having the treatment sessions difficult
• setting up a new service that delivered laser therapy at the same time as radiotherapy was more complicated than the team thought it would be 
• there were problems that included arranging appointments, finding suitable rooms and having enough trained staff with time to deliver laser therapy

Conclusion
The team say it’s difficult to draw a firm conclusion about having low level laser therapy. This is because there weren’t enough people in the study. The team say more research needs to be done to find out for sure how well this treatment works. 

The researchers learned about how to set up a laser therapy service within the NHS as part of people’s treatment. This could help with future studies.

More detailed information
There is more information about this research in the reference below. 

Please note, the information we link to here is not in plain English. It has been written for healthcare professionals and researchers.

Photobiomodulation in the management of oral mucositis for adult head and neck cancer patients receiving irradiation: the LiTEFORM RCT
M Nugent and others 
Health Technology Assessment, 2022. Volume: 26, issue: 46.

Where this information comes from    
We have based this summary on the information in the article above. As far as we are aware, it has not been reviewed by independent specialists (peer reviewed ) or published in a medical journal. We have not analysed the data ourselves. As far as we are aware, the link we list above is active and the article is free and available to view.