Efficacy of photodynamic therapy in actinic cheilitis: A systematic review

•Few studies paid attention on the efficacy of photodynamic therapy in actinic cheilitis, we did this almost at the first time.•Our study confirms that ALA-patch PDT seem to achieve high complete clinical response rate. The complete clinical response rate of ALA-patch PDT, traditional photodynamic therapy (T-PDT), and daylight photodynamic therapy (DL-PDT) was 80.00% (24/30), 65.14% (114/179), and 76.74% (33/43), respectively.•Besides, DL-PDT might be a well-tolerated therapy compared with T-PDT and ALA-patch PDT. The rate of painless patients was 87.10% (27/31) in DL-PDT, whereas the rate was only 31.25% (15/48) in T-PDT. The rates of moderate and severe local phototoxicity were 47.78% (43/90) in T-PDT, 0.00% (0/23) in DL-PDT, and 21.05% (4/19) in ALA-patch PDT.