WWW.PILOTLASER.

COM
DIODE LASER

MADE IN AMERICA

toll free 1-877-877-9778 phone 1-801-256-9282 fax 1-801-256-9287 vet@caogroup.com CAO GROUP 4628 W. Skyhawk Drive West Jordan, UT 84084 www.pilotlaser.com

PILOT VETERINARY DIODE LASER

HISTORY OF LASER THERAPY
HISTORY OF LASER THERAPY

By de nition, the term photobiomodulation therapy means the application of electromagnetic radiation within the red and infrared spectrum over injuries and using lasers to stimulate healing and pain relief within those tissues. There are currently only two types of lasers involved in the healthcare industry: surgical lasers and therapeutic lasers. Surgical lasers cut tissue, therapeutic laser heal tissue. Light is one of the oldest forms of therapy. All living creatures need light, air, food and water to function normally. Sir Isaac Newton was the rst of separate light with the prison to discover the visible spectrum in the 1660s until 1903 sunlight was the only light available for therapeutic application. This is when the Danish medical Dr. Nils Finsen was awarded the Nobel Prize for successfully treating surgical tuberculosis, rickets, and lupus vulgaris with ultraviolet light. This is the rst evidence in history that an arti cial light source was used in the therapeutic application. In 1916, Albert Einstein postulated theory of lasers in an assumption necessary to support the theory of relativity. Einstein correctly propose that when a photon overcorrect energy level collides with Adam that has been energized under the right conditions to photons at precisely the same energy would be emitted. The rst evidence that infrared light could possibly be involved in intracellular communication was reported in 1923 by a Russian researcher Alexander Gurswitsch. He observed me that infrared light could be transmitted from a test tube to another adjacent test tube without any physical contact between the two of them. He used the term mitogenic radiation to describe this process. It took 40 years before technology produced what Einstein predicted. On May 16, 1960, Theodore Maiman produced the rst Ruby laser at the huge aircraft research laboratory in Malibu California. In November of 1960, Peter Sorokin and Mirek Stephenson at IBM laboratories produced the rst uranium laser. In 1961 Ali Javan, William Bennett, and Donald Herriot invented the rst helium neon laser at Bell laboratories. The father of laser therapy, Dr. Endre Mester, is credited with the earliest experimental application of the low powered laser in medicine. In 1967, Dr. Mester from the Budapest University in Hungary wanted to nd out if laser irradiation caused cancer. His experiment was simple. He took two groups of mice and shaved their backs. One of the groups was exposed to the energy from a low-power bruit laser will be a group was not. The laser-exposed group did not get cancer and to his surprise hair on their shaved backs grew back more quickly than the unexposed group. This was how laser biostimulation was rst discovered. Unfortunately for the world, he published his ndings in a Hungarian medical journal instead of an international forum. Therefore, the bene ts of laser therapy were utilized in the Eastern Bloc countries long before the West learned from them. During the early 1970s laser therapy was been employed throughout Eastern Europe China and the Soviet Union. Nearly all of the early research and applied laser therapy originates from these geographical areas. The rst record of stimulating acupuncture points with laser occurred with the oral surgeon in China. Yo Cheng Zhou discovered a reduction in e.g. my and pain following routine dental extractions and laser treatments were used as the standard local anesthetic techniques. His protocol involved therapy of 2 to 6 mW of a red beam laser to a single point for ve minutes. The tooth was then removed. Laser therapy was then applied to Hegu, the distal acupuncture point with recognized anesthetic properties. Throughout the remainder of the 1970s and early 1980s, laser therapy spread to Western European countries. These early reports using these modalities to perform physical therapy involved lasers that were only in the 5 to 10 mW range. Soon thereafter, the laser therapy appeared in the United States. In 1981, available lasers were in the 1 mW range and were manufactured in China. By 1993, Margaret Naeser, PhD. had accomplished enough research through the Robert Wood Johnson foundation of Princeton New Jersey that she was able to establish the rst independent institutional review Board for laser acupuncture research located in Boston Massachusetts. This was the beginning of an e ort to compile and present all of the current information and research to comply with FDA regulations. In May of 1994 of the World Association for Laser Therapy was formed in Barcelona Spain. It was a uni cation of the International Laser Therapy Association and the International Society for Laser Application in Medicine (ISLAM). The purpose of these organizations was to pursue common goals of promoting research, education, and clinical applications of laser photo stimulation internationally. The North American Association for Laser Therapy (NAALT) was established in 1998. This includes the regions of Mexico, Canada, and the United States of America. Its mission is to improve the understanding of the photobiological mechanisms, treatment parameters and protocols, techniques, and regulatory issues. Both of these organizations include scienti c and clinical laser specialists. They also provide a forum in the form of a journal, labeled Photomedicine and Laser Surgery, which publishes peer reviewed papers of importance within the medical laser industry. The Dawn of the laser therapy is now behind us. We are now in the full light of day with the preponderance of scienti c evidence already established, with thousands of practitioners providing laser therapy throughout the world. By now, all skeptics of laser therapy should be silenced, except those who are asking themselves how can I best utilize this new technology?