Colorful story of phototherapy for neonatal jaundice

Giovanni Agati; Franco Fusi; Riccardo Pratesi; Simone Pratesi; Gian Paolo Donzelli

doi:10.1117/12.260751

4 December 1996 Colorful story of phototherapy for neonatal jaundice

Giovanni Agati, Franco Fusi, Riccardo Pratesi, Simone Pratesi, Gian Paolo Donzelli

Proceedings Volume 2924, Photochemotherapy: Photodynamic Therapy and Other Modalities II; (1996) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.260751
Event: BiOS Europe '96, 1996, Vienna, Austria

Abstract

Colors have always attracted our fantasy and imagination. Medicine, like many other human activities, did not escape their attraction, sometimes with fatal consequences. The scientific literature, magazines, etc. are full of reports on the beneficial, miraculous effects of colors. Even nowadays, where photobiology and photomedicine have been put on very firm bases, chromopaths are still at work. The evolution of light therapy from chromotherapy to photomedicine is presented in brief, with the aim of contributing to the action against the unscientific behavior of researchers and clinicians who support biological and/or clinical results without serious and well documented work. Colors have played an important role in the phototherapy of neonatal jaundice. It is an interesting example of how even a rigorous scientific search for the optimal color has progressed in part by change, due to the lack of an action spectrum, too hurried extrapolations of animal results to man, unsuspected dynamical behavior of bilirubin molecules, etc. The story of its evolution up to present knowledge is reported in this paper.

Citation Download Citation

Giovanni Agati, Franco Fusi, Riccardo Pratesi, Simone Pratesi, and Gian Paolo Donzelli "Colorful story of phototherapy for neonatal jaundice", Proc. SPIE 2924, Photochemotherapy: Photodynamic Therapy and Other Modalities II, (4 December 1996); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.260751

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