Hand-held excimer laser from Norwood
This one’s a medical gadget; apparently. Doctor’s must get to use all the seriously fun gadgets as well as their chrome-plated tools that wouldn’t look out of place in a butcher’s shop.
It’s an Er:YAG hand-held laser, which is used in “IV cannulation”. Being the ignoramus that I am I didn’t know what IV cannulation was so I checked in Wikipedia. It seems that it’s a medical procedure used to cut into the skin so you can insert an intra-venous drip. But I’m not a doctor; so don’t blame me if you agree to an IV cannulation and s/he shoves a big probe up your bottom!
The hand-held laser itself is only used to remove a few top layers from the skin; a technique know as laser ablation. The removal of a few outer layers is enough to allow a localised anaesthetic cream to work faster than normal before the juicy, big drip needle goes in.
This is a laser gadget that wouldn’t look out of place on a Star Trek set though – I hope it’s permanently set on “stun”!
The Norwood Abbey LAD-01 Er:YAG laser. Found via Med Gadget. The Norwood site uses frames so it’s not easy to post a link to a relevant page, but you can download this PDF document for more details of the Norwood LAD laser [Thanks to Scrubs Gallery and their Medical Uniforms (somebodies got to make them I suppose) ].
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When medical gadgets go wrong » Coolest Gadgets Says: June 28, 2006 at 2:16 pm
[...] We’re great fans of medGadget and have featured a few medical innovations such as the handheld excimer laser, and the t-shirt that measures the wearer’s vital signs. [...]