Due to the emerging bacterial resistance and the protection of tenacious biofilms, it is hard for the single antibacterial modality to achieve satisfactory
therapeutic effects nowadays. In recent years,
photothermal therapy (PTT)-derived multimodal synergistic treatments have received wide attention and exhibited cooperatively enhanced bactericidal activity. PTT features spatiotemporally controllable generation of
hyperthermia that could eradicate bacteria without inducing resistance. The synergy of it with other treatments, such as
chemotherapy, photo-dynamic/catalytic
therapy (
PDT/PCT),
immunotherapy, and sonodynamic
therapy (SDT), could lower the introduced
laser density in PTT and avoid undesired overheating injury of normal tissues. Simultaneously, by heat-induced improvement of the bacterial membrane permeability, PTT is conducive for accelerated intracellular permeation of chemotherapeutic drugs as well as
reactive oxygen species (ROS) generated by
photosensitizers/sonosensitizers, and could promote infiltration of immune cells. Thereby, it could solve the currently existing sterilization deficiencies of other combined therapeutic modes, for example, bacterial resistance for
chemotherapy, low drug permeability for
PDT/PCT/SDT, adverse immunoreactions for
immunotherapy, etc. Admittedly, PTT-derived synergistic treatments are becoming essential in fighting
bacterial infection, especially those caused by
antibiotic-resistant strains. This review firstly presents the classical and newly reported photothermal agents (PTAs) in brief. Profoundly, through the introduction of delicately designed nanocomposite platforms, we systematically discuss the versatile photothermal-derived multimodal synergistic
therapy with the purpose of sterilization application. At the end, challenges to PTT-derived combinational
therapy are presented and promising synergistic bactericidal prospects are anticipated.