Patent ID: 7862556

Claim:
A surgical system that ablates soft tissue, the system comprising: a fiber laser oscillator; one or more pumping sources configured to provide pump energy to the fiber laser oscillator such that the fiber laser oscillator lases to emit electromagnetic radiation with a predetermined fundamental wavelength; one or more optical fiber amplifiers configured to (i) receive at least a portion of the electromagnetic radiation emitted by the fiber laser oscillator and (ii) amplify the received electromagnetic radiation; a second harmonics generator optically coupled to the one or more optical amplifiers to receive electromagnetic radiation that has been emitted by the fiber laser oscillator and amplified by the one or more optical amplifiers, wherein the second harmonics generator is configured to convert the wavelength of the received electromagnetic radiation from the predetermined fundamental wavelength to a predetermined output wavelength; an optical output configured to (i) receive electromagnetic radiation with the predetermined output wavelength that has been amplified by the one or more optical fiber amplifiers and (ii) deliver the received electromagnetic radiation to soft tissue of a patient to ablate the soft tissue; and a power assembly configured to receive an input power from an external power source sufficient to drive at least the one or more pumping sources and the one or more optical amplifiers with the input power, wherein the efficiency of the power of the electromagnetic radiation delivered to the soft tissue of the patient to ablate the soft tissue with respect to the input power is greater than about 6%.