It is shown under in-vitro conditions that lasers can be used percutaneously to occlude the fallopian tube ostium by coagulation necrosis for female sterilization. The maximum depth of coagulation obtained without charring is about 3 mm with the Nd:YAG laser radiation at 6.5 W of power and 50 sec. interaction time and about 1 m m with the cw-C °2 laser radiation at 1 W and 20 sec. In general the surface of the coagulated tubal tissue gets carbonized at much lower powers of the C °2 laser than that of the Nd:YAG laser. Although use of a sapphire cold contact probe with the Nd:YAG laser delivery fibre makes the operation snore convenient but it is found to be very lossy for the laser radiation. Recanalization of the laser occluded fallopian tubes can be done using laser induced vapourization. Threshold fluence for vapourization of the coa gulated tubal tissue is found to be about 2 K]/cm2 for the CO2 laser and 27 KJ/cm2 for the Nd:Y A C laser and these values are found to increase on increasing the interaction time. At 4W of power, the cw-C °2 laser beam focussed to a spot diameter of about 300 jm was satisfactorily used to recanalize the occluded fallopian tubes.

Date Published: 1 September 1990
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 1353, First International Conference on Lasers and Medicine, (1 September 1990); doi: 10.1117/12.23759

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 1353:
First International Conference on Lasers and Medicine
Vitali I. Konov; Gerhard J. Mueller; Alexander M. Prokhorov, Editor(s)