Laser in Surgery

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Laser is already in surgery. Carbon dioxide laser is used to incise tissue (skin). Argon laser used in treatment of piles. Now, it is thought be be used in deep cancer surgery. It will be perhaps the most fascinating to watch these developments.

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk Lasers scan future possibilities There had been a race to demonstrate "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation" (Laser), and Maiman beat everyone to it on 16 May, 1960. "Lasers can accelerate particles to high energy and we can use that to treat cancer," she adds. "At the moment, with the way we treat cancer with radiation, photons travel into the body and they deposit energy in healthy tissue as well as at the cancer site. "Whereas when protons and ions travel into the body, they will deposit most of their energy only at the very end of their range. So we can use lasers to tune protons to deposit their energy just within the tumour site." As lasers have got ever more powerful, their pulse rate has also pushed new boundaries.

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