Introduction

Abstract

Since the first report on laser radiation by Maiman (1960), many potential fields for its application have been investigated. Among these, medical laser surgery certainly belongs to the most significant advances of our present century. Actually, various kinds of lasers have already become irreplaceable tools of modern medicine. Although clinical applications were first limited to ophthalmology — the most spectacular and today well established laser surgery being argon ion laser coagulations in the case of retinal detachment — the fields of medical laser treatment have meanwhile considerably widened. Due to the variety of existing laser systems, the diversity of their physical parameters, and last but not least the enthusiasm of several research groups almost every branch of surgical medicine has been involved. This should not be interpreted as criticism, although much damage has been done in some cases — especially in the field of biostimulation — when researchers have lost orientation due to striving for new publications and success, and industries have praised laser systems that later turned out to be completely useless. In general, though, many really useful laser techniques have been developed and clinically established with the help of all kinds of scientists. These methods of treatment have been reconfirmed by other researchers and properly documented in a variety of well accepted scientific journals. And, even with early laser applications primarily aimed at therapeutic results, several interesting diagnostic techniques have recently been added. Only some of them will be addressed in this book wherever appropriate, for instance diagnosis of tumors by fluorescence dyes and diagnosis of caries by spectroscopical analysis of laser-induced plasma sparks. However, the discussion of these diagnostic applications is not the main goal of the author, and the interested reader is referred to detailed descriptions found elsewhere.