Lasers in medical techniques

The special feature of lasers to be able to 'deposit' energy in materials at very high precision is broadly used in eye and blood-vessel surgery, in tumor control and in cosmetic operations.

A specific application is the disintegration of body-owned stones ("lithotripsy") in hollow organs like kidney, bladder, gall bladder, without severe surgical operation ("minimal invasive"). The figure shows a training device for physicians at which they may learn, using an endoscope, how to bring the glass fibre that carries the laser light precisely to the location that is to be treated.

It is a special technical challenge thereby, to generally prevent the accidental destruction of soft tissue. This is made possible by the laser device U100plus shown. The stone is disintegrated under water by a shockwave for the generation of which extremely short, low-energy laser pulses are sufficient - as they are generated by this medical laser.

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