Unique Uses for Lasers in the Medical Field

The first laser was invented in 1960, relatively recently in terms of scientific and medical history. But in the decades since its first successful test, the laser has become a highly sophisticated tool that has revolutionized the medical field in a variety of ways. Here are just five of the ways in which lasers are used in medicine today.
Lasers have helped make dental procedures much less painful affairs than they used to be. Many dentists today use Nd-YAG lasers as opposed to metal drills to treat cavities. Decayed material that forms in tooth cavities is softer than healthy tooth enamel. A dentist will thus set the laser to a strong enough setting to burn away the decayed tissue but not strong enough to harm the healthy enamel.
By using a highly focused laser beam instead of a metal scalpel, surgeons can make difficult and dangerous incisions with much greater ease and safety than before. Carbon dioxide lasers are the most common types of lasers used for scalpels. They can cut cleanly and precisely through human tissue, while cauterizing broken blood vessels as they move along, thus preventing excessive blood loss. The depth of the laser cut is always constant, which is another advantage, since using a conventional scalpel runs the risk of a doctor cutting too deeply.
Cleaning a heart’s arteries conventionally involves opening the chest cavity to access the arteries directly. Needless to say, this is a risky procedure with a long and painful recovery period. By inserting a tiny optic fiber attached to a laser into a patient’s arm or leg vein, doctors can forego open heart surgery and achieve the same goal in a much less invasive way. The optical fiber serves as the surgeons eyes. Once the plaque is spotted, the laser is fired and the plaque is burned away. The vapor is absorbed by a small plastic tube inserted along with the optical array.
This is probably the newest form of medical laser use and it has just recently been getting official recognition by the FDA and the medical community. Low level laser therapy involves exposing tissue to low wavelength laser light in order to treat muscle pain, tendinitis and to help in the process of healing wounds among other things.

Aesthetic lasers are used in the field of cosmetic surgery to remove birth marks and skin blotches. These procedures take advantage of lasers’ monochromatic quality. Lasers only shine in a single color, which can be adjusted so that it is absorbed by the patch of skin that’s being treated.
Holds K-wires or be used in intramedullary interlocking nail surgery or arthroscopic surgery

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