Abstract

Lasers have found numerous applications in medicine and surgery. Most current surgical applications use a focused laser beam to produce spatially confined heating which results in thermal injury, tissue removal, or control of bleeding (hemostasis). The choice of the laser wavelength determines the depth of penetration in tissue and thus influences the relative importance of tissue removal and hemostasis, the cut/seal ratio. Recently, however, control of the laser wavelength and, in some cases, output pulse length has been used to obtain selective destruction of specific targets within tissue.

© 1985 Optical Society of America