Colleagues,
As reported in MIT Tech Review ... The promise of medical lasers goes beyond clean incisions and eye surgery: Many believe that lasers should be used not just to create wounds but to mend them too. Abraham Katzir, a physicist at Tel Aviv University, has a system that may just do the trick and is proving successful in its first human trials.
In principle, "laser-bonded" healing offers certain advantages over classic needle-and-thread sutures, including faster healing, decreased risk of infection, and less scarring. Researchers have been working toward flesh-welding lasers for more than a decade, and a number of human trials have shown promise. But what was lacking, until now, was consistency. Flesh, blood vessels, and nerves are delicate tissues that can easily be -- for lack of a better word -- overcooked.
To overcome this problem, Katzir and his colleagues developed a laser-based system with a feedback loop that prevents overheating..."It's a fabulous process, with undeniable biological advantages," says Michael Treat, a surgeon at New York Presbyterian Hospital and associate professor at Columbia University Medical Center...One of Katzir's competitors, Irene Kochevar, is a dermatology professor at Massachusetts General Hospital and is working on her own version of laser-bonded welding, but one that takes advantage of light rather than heat....
Read on at: http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/21687/?nlid=1536
ENJOY!
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