Abstract
Thermal damage to tissue produced during laser surgery is of concern for several reasons. Thermal damage can be beneficial when it causes coagulation that prevents excessive bleeding. However, thermal damage can also interfere with wound healing. Recent studies have shown that the residual thermal damage at the bottom of incisions made with a CO2 laser can be limited by using pulses shorter in duration than the thermal relaxation time corresponding to an optical absorption length in tissue.1 These studies have shown that when surgical cw CO2 lasers deliver irradiances of the order of 500 W/cm2, the zone of thermal damage is 750 μm wide; TEA CO2 lasers delivering 2-μs long or 100-ns long pulses at irradiances of 2-100 MW/cm2 produce damage zones of the order of 50 μm wide. The ability of pulsed laser radiation to confine thermal damage to a region comparable in depth with the optical absorption depth is now well recognized.
© 1989 Optical Society of America
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