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Surgeons Weld Wounds Shut With Surgical Laser

Posted by samzenpus on from the amazing-laser dept.

Ruach writes "The promise of medical lasers goes beyond clean incisions and eye surgery: Many believe that lasers should be used not just to create wounds but to mend them too. Abraham Katzir, a physicist at Tel Aviv University, has a system that may just do the trick and is proving successful in its first human trials."

2 of 151 comments (clear)

  1. The real news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    As usual, the summary misses the interesting bit. Using lasers to seal wounds is old news - I first read about it in the Readers Digest about a decade ago. What's new here is a mechanism to prevent overheating.

  2. Re:So Trek's closing-wounds-with-beams thing is re by trburkholder · · Score: 5, Informative

    From TFA:

    "All a surgeon has to do is move the pen's tip along the cut, strengthening and sealing the weld with a solder of water-soluble protein."

    It looks a lot like very controlled cooking and I suspect the protein used to connect the tissue denatures in the process. It's not welding, it's hot-melt glue.

    Still very cool.