With the increasing pressures being put on the medical system to reduce treatment costs, the use of lasers in surgery is fast becoming an effective means for achieving beneficial treatment at lowered overall treatment costs. For this and other reasons, the medical field is about to undergo a revolution in surgical therapy and in the use of laser diagnostics. This paper discusses the past, present and future outlook for medical lasers, including the markets, changes occurring in both lasers and fiber optic delivery systems, new surgical applications likely to become important and some of the leading systems suppliers.

Date Published: 10 March 1987
PDF: 4 pages
Proc. SPIE 0712, Lasers in Medicine, (10 March 1987); doi: 10.1117/12.937347

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 0712:
Lasers in Medicine
Stephen N. Joffe M.D.; John A. Parrish M.D., Editor(s)