27 YEARS OF LASER TREATMENT: A PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

The author presents a twenty-seven year retrospective overview of his work in laser surgery and, more specifically, laser therapy, during which over 45,000 patients have been treated at the author's clinics as of June 2001. The author traces his laser roots, starting in 1974 with his visit to the laboratory and clinic of the late Professor Leon Goldman at the University of Cincinnati to study the evolution of cutaneous laser treatment. Upon returning to Japan, the author developed and used the new laser technology first in Shizuoka and then in Tokyo. He used the laser to remove congenital and acquired pigmented nevi, hemangiaoma and other cutaneous defects, and by 1978 had treated over 3,000 patients. In the course of these treatments he noted some interesting phenomena associated specifically with laser treatment compared with conventional methodology, such as the ability to treat side effects caused by some of the conventional methods. He also noted that treatment of target lesions with laser often concomitantly treated unassociated painful symptoms such as postherpetic neuralgia, consequently in 1979 the author specifically targeted pain applications using existing and newly developed laser systems. These included the defocused beam of the Nd:YAG, the HeNe laser, and a series of diode lasers developed both at the Japan Medical Laser Laboratory and in conjunction with Matsushita Electric Company. The International Society for Laser Surgery and Medicine (ISLSM) held its fourth meeting in Tokyo in 1981, at which the first commercially-available battery-powered laser therapy system was unveiled. Since then many other systems have been developed and experimentally evaluated. In 1988, the author was one of the founding members and the first President of the International Laser Therapy Association, and was the founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal, Laser Therapy, first published by John Wiley and Sons of Chichester, UK. To date, using laser therapy alone, over 9,000 patients have been treated at the author's clinics, and a further 29,000 have been treated with laser therapy in combination with laser surgery, as part of the author's total treatment concept (TTC). Case reports are presented to illustrate the author's concepts of low reactive level laser therapy (LLLT), high reactive level laser treatment (HLLT), and his latest concept of medium reactive level laser treatment (MLLT).