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Q: Quantenoptik

Q 38: Laser in Medicine

Q 38.1: Talk

Friday, April 6, 2001, 17:30–17:45, H 2013

Bone tissue ablation with a TEA CO₂ laser — •Said Afilal¹, Thomas Mitra¹, Mikhail Ivanenko¹, and Peter hering^1,2 — ¹Center of advanced european study and research, Friedenspl. 16, 53111 Bonn, Germany — ²Institute of Laser Medicine, Duesseldorf University, D-40001 Duesseldorf, Germany

The application of short CO₂ laser pulses to bone tissue in combination with an air-water spray provides a clean incision without carbonisation. In experiments with a transversely excited atmospheric-pressure (TEA) CO₂ laser we used two different pulse shapes: one with for the TEA lasers usual No-dqtailNo-dq which is about 1 µs long and contains up to 50% of energy, and other without this tail (40 ns FWHM). The latter shape, despite smaller energy, provides an ablation effect similar to the longer pulse but much less plasma formation in the evaporating debris cloud. Dependences of ablation depth per pulse and specific ablation energy on CO₂ laser wavelength (9.1 - 10.7 µm), energy density and focus geometry will be reported and discussed.