MANY specialties in medicine and surgery are interested in the progress of the biomedical applications of the laser. In clinical research, the emphasis is on the use of the laser as a type of optical knife for laser surgery. The laser knife is added to the recent list which the physicists and engineers have given to the surgeons, the cryosurgical unit and the plasma arc scalpel.1
One need only emphasize that the laser is a source of intense light which can extend from the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum through the far infrared. The laser radiation is coherent (the waves are all in step), it is highly monochromatic (same wave length). It has tremendous energy and power densities at levels at which none of us have worked before. So, the surgeon now has a very powerful light beam which can be precisely collimated. Some lasers have color specificity