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Lasers Medical Field

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Lasers in the Medical Field The invention of the laser gave the medical field an asset, despite the possible side effects of using lasers. Lasers have, or will, allowed progression in the medical field that opens doors to more efficient ways to practice medicine. Lasers have also provided a way to cure illnesses or fix problems that we had no solution for, or had only a temporary fix. Lasers have changed the medical field for the better, and more uses for the laser are being discovered every day. The laser was invented by Theodore H. Maiman on May 16, 1960 at Hughes research laboratory in California (Early History, 2). The laser, which stands for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation, has three main components: the pump, the laser medium, and the optical resonator. The pump sends energy into the laser …show more content…

In an experiment done by Cornelia I. Bargmann and Leon Avery in 1995, they used a laser microbeam, a laser focused into a microscope, to kill a specific cell or group of cells in Caenorhabditis elegans (roundworms). They killed cells so they could observe how cells around the killed cells would react and observe the behavioral differences in the Caenorhabditis elegan (Avery, 1). Though they did not specify what laser microbeam they used, it is possible that they used a nitrogen laser microbeam. The nitrogen laser microbeam can focus on a volume of less than one femtoliter and can reach a temperature of 100,000 kelvin (Monajembashi, 14). In their experiment, they focused the laser microbeam on the nucleus of the cell, and severely damaged it to kill the cell (Avery, 1). With the laser microbeam able to kill a single cell, there are countless ways it can be used. If access to the cell is made, a laser microbeam could possibly be used to kill cancer cells. This would enable doctors to only have to make a small channel to the cell to be able to kill it, if they can locate the

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