Lasers in Surgery and Medicine

Background and Objectives: The thermal damage on adjacent healthy structures is always an unwanted consequence of continuous‐wave laser irradiation of soft tissues. To propose a laser as an effective alternative to traditional surgical tools, this photothermal damage due to heat conduction must be taken into account with a detailed laser dosimetry study. Two candidate lasers; a 980‐nm diode and 1940‐nm Tm:fiber were selected for this study. Despite the poor absorption by water, the 980‐nm diode laser has been one of the most widely used lasers in soft tissue surgeries due its good absorption by hemoglobin, which provides good homeostasis. The second laser; the Tm:fiber laser was selected due to its wavelength operating at an absorption peak of water (1,940 nm), which makes it a good candidate for ablation of biological tissues, and it is readily capable of being transmitted through flexible fiber optics to deliver energy to hard‐to‐reach regions. The underlying motivation for the research described in this paper is that with a comprehensive comparison of ablation capabilities and a detailed dose study of infrared lasers operating at different wavelengths and temperature monitoring of the tissue during laser surgery, it may be possible to specify the optimal laser parameters for laser surgery, and propose a treatment alternative to conventional surgical techniques in clinical use. The objectives of this study were to investigate and to compare the thermal effects of 980‐nm and 1940‐nm lasers on cortical tissue in vivo, to find the optimum parameters for laser‐brain‐ablation with minimum thermal damage to the surrounding healthy tissue, and finally, to analyze laser irradiated tissue thermographically and histologically to correlate thermal events and tissue damage with laser irradiation parameters. Study Design/Materials and Methods: Stereotaxic laser brain surgeries were performed on 32 male Wistar rats. A t‐type thermocouple was used to measure the temperature of the nearby tissue at a distance of 1 mm above and 1mm away from the fiber tip during laser surgery. Cresyl fast violet (CFV) staining was used to expose the thermal extent of laser surgery on cortical tissue. Eight tissue samples from each laser study group were processed for histological analysis and the mean ± standard deviation for thermal damage was reported. Thermal damage was quantified as ablation (thermally removed tissue), severe and mild coagulation (irreversible thermal damage) and edematous (reversible thermal damage) areas with regard to CFV stained slices. The Pearson correlation coefficient was calculated to test if the ablation efficiencies and total damage, and edematous areas were correlated to rates of temperature change. Results: No significant adverse effects were observed during surgeries. We found that both lasers investigated were successful in cortical tissue removal. Our results also revealed that irrespective of the mode of operation, laser wavelength and laser power, there is a strong correlation between the rates of temperature change and ablation efficiencies and a negative correlation between the rate of temperature change and total damage and edematous area. Conclusions: Both lasers investigated were successful in cortical tissue removal. We also reported that when the amount of energy delivered to the tissue was constant, the most important issue was to deliver this energy in a short time to achieve more efficient ablations with less edema around the lesion, regardless of mode of delivery (continuous or pulsed‐modulated mode), but further studies including the healing period after laser surgeries have to be performed to compare the thermal extent of damage comprehensively. Lasers Surg. Med. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.