Medical 100W Laser- saving lives

Hi guys don't meant to be all depressing or educational on you but I just wanted to start a little thread to show how lasers are not just for amusement but are saving lives too.

This week I've been lucky enough to have been doing a week of Radiology at one of the top hospitals in the world for this field as I decide whether I'm going to apply to med school next year.

Today (27/3) and yesterday (26/3) I had the privilege of watching the following laser to burn away cancerous/ benign tumors in 2 patients who would have other wise had to have major operations to remove them.

This basically involves sticking a needle with fiber optic cable (to deliver the laser light) inside into the patient and using the laser to heat up the cells killing them- therefore recovery happens in hours as opposed to weeks.

Whilst I didn't really get to do much with it (I helped with water cooling and had the privilege of watching) it was a fascinating experience and I thought id share for those interested.

this really is changing peoples lives. One person I saw this demonstrated on was not capable of having the tumor removed- they were too ill to undergo surgery without serious risk. This option quite probably saved their life.

Laser specs:

Class 4 laser
100W Max CW Nd: YAG 1064nm (IR)
Diode: 670nm CW class IIIb 5mW
5mW CW 632nm HE NE

When anywhere near this thing I had to wear laser specs:
OD 7 @ 1064nm VLT >95%

I apologize for the pics they were taken with a poor camera in a very strong magnetic field (MRI scanner ~4 teslar).

Re: Medical 100W Laser

This is the laser itself (2 blocks). Distortion was added to top right on purpose.

Each of the 2 units can be used as separate lasers (each 100W) so more than one beam can be placed into a patient if the area being targeted is large.

Re: Medical 100W Laser

Sorry this is blurry- magnetic field didn't help.

It essentially says that when the interlocks have disengaged to avoid all contact with laser beam.

Re: Medical 100W Laser

last photo essentially saying warning about the laser and the HE NE part of it.

Re: Medical 100W Laser

Very interesting!

Re: Medical 100W Laser

cheers, this really interests me as it seems that medicine is finally moving away from the 'cut it out' approach finally and is using something more subtle.

The next step is to be ably to do this burning away without even touching the skin at all- I saw a demonstration of this where they managed to burn away the tumor with focused sound waves! No incisions or anything else needed- all the patient needed to do was lie down for a little while whilst she was bombarded with focused sound and the tumor was slowly burnt away. With this newer approach there is absolutely no recovery time- the patient can walk out instantly!

Re: Medical 100W Laser

The day I get cancer (Not the best family history ;D ) I hope I get to have it taken out with a laser. By that time, we will have 100W lasers in our MXDL flashlights so we will be able to DIY our cancer treatments

But back to reality, it is pretty amazing that they can use light to destroy cancer.

Re: Medical 100W Laser

Light and now sound- and the latter one has no incisions- you just essentially lie on top of a big focused speaker to horribly simplify decades of expensive research :

That's really really cool, but you need to take proper pictures man.

That's pretty amazing equipment. I assume that the smaller diodes are for targeting etc. until the big IR gets busy. ZAP!

With great power comes great responsibility... so learn well young Padwan!

Thanks for sharing too!

CC

Re: Medical 100W Laser

is it a multimode optic fiber?

SMIDSY said:

Light and now sound- and the latter one has no incisions- you just essentially lie on top of a big focused speaker to horribly simplify decades of expensive research  :

Click to expand...

with sound, when the tumor is desintegrated or broken into pieces, does it remain there? because if there are no incisions then the bad tissue wouldnt be taken out of the pacient, i dont get it =(. or is it that when it gets destroyed it is no longer harmful?

Re: Medical 100W Laser

nikokapo said:

with sound, when the tumor is desintegrated or broken into pieces, does it remain there? because if there are no incisions then the bad tissue wouldnt be taken out of the pacient, i dont get it =(. or is it that when it gets destroyed it is no longer harmful?

Click to expand...

My guess is the dead cells nolonger have any negative consequence and get dissolved into the body eventually....??

Thanks for sharing. Lasers do quite a bit of magnificent things. Now we need someone to make a cartoon of a laser blasting away cancer! (instead of another human)

I don't want to change the topic too much but there's another amazing surgery that is only possible (well, they used to do it with a knife but the results weren't very good...) with a laser - LASIK eye surgery.

I had that done in 1999 and my vision is perfect - actually a bit better at 20/15 with both eyes. That they can use a UV laser to precisely machine the cornea to achieve near perfect (or sometimes better) vision in people who would have bumped into things without their glasses is awesome! The only drawback (but a very temporary one) is that you get to smell the cells of your cornea being vaporized - smells like burning hair - during the operation.

Hey, glad to see another laser enthusiast getting into the medical field  ;D

I'm a 1st year med student at the moment... actually going to be doing an OR elective in the coming weeks, would be great if I got to see one of these babies in action  

And, I'm considering ophthalmology (eye surgery), so I may be able to play with medical lasers in my future  

ive actually been considering adding a medical lasers section to the forum, what do you guys think? i know it might not be the most popular topic, but i think lots of people are interested in it and it might bring more laser lovers to the site