BlO—Lancaster Fanning, Saturday, May 5,1984
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Users help heel siek people
WASHINGTON - Mention
lasers, and images of death rays
and shoot-outs in space sometimes
come to mind, but in reality the
devices are in the forefront of the
healing arts, where they’re helping
save lives every day.
Doctors were among the first to
exploit the laser’s potential, so that
now it can literally treat patients
from head to toe.
“The number of things medical
lasers can do is past imagining,”
says Terry Fuller, head of the
nation’s largest laser-surgery
research lab at Sinai Hospital in
Detroit. Last year, at that hospital
alone, surgeons used lasers in 5,000
operations.
A laser the word is an
acronym for “light amplification
by stimulated emission of
radiation” is an intensely
coherent and concentrated light
source capable of incredible
precision and power.
Use Bloodless
Scalpels
Eye surgeons manipulate lasers
as bloodless scalpels to make
extremely delicate incisions, or to
cauterize blood vessels, while
leaving tissue unaffected only a
few cell widths away.
To vaporize tumors or to melt
and rebond tom nerves of blood
vessels, surgeons use the unseen
radiation of carbon dioxide lasers.
Tissue vanishes beneath it in tiny
wisps of smoke. Tumors in the
brain and spinal cord, many of
which were previously inoperable,
are proving receptive to the laser’s
delicate and healing touch. Though
no cure for cancer, laser therapy
can clear obstructions and prolong
life.
To screen women for cancer of
the cervix, Dr. Leon Wheeless and
colleagues at the University of
Rochester Medical Center in New
York stain cells with a fluorescent
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dye and analyze them with a
unique laser scanner. Cells whose
nuclei fluoresce abnormally may
indicate cancer, since they absorb
more dye and glow brighter in the
laser light.
The scanner also recognizes
when a sample may contain too
few cells to reveal cancer reliably
critical because, if detected
early, cervical cancer is nearly
always curable.
Another laser-sensitive dye
hematoporphyrin derivative, or
HPD is involved in experimental
therapy for cancer patients. HPD
injected into the body is absorbed
and excreted by all cells, healthy
and cancerous. It remains longer
in malignant cells, however, and
where laser light can reach and
activate it, cell membranes
dissolve.
“Dozens of cancers wilt under
such attack, without the painful
and sometimes disfiguring side
What Do
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Match each snake
with the correct
description.
A. Rattlesnake
B. Coral snake
C. Ki'*' snakr
5-3-94
effects of chemotherapy and X
rays,” reports Allen A. Boraiko in
an article on the many new uses of
the laser in the March National
Geographic.
The laser is not only helping to
preserve life but to perpetuate it.
Says Dr. Joseph Beilina of the
Laser Research Foundation in
New Orleans, “Until a few years
ago, an infected pelvis or perpetual
menstrual bleeding usually
prompted a hysterectomy
sterilization. Laser treatment now
gives people a chance to have
children, by preserving internal
organs.”
Beilina has even been able to
reconstruct internal organs with a
laser. In one case he was able to
rebuild the pinhead-size tips of a
young woman’s damaged and
blocked Fallopian tubes.
Microsurgery that might have
lasted seven hours took only one,
and the woman conceived a child
six months later.
Holes in
Blood Cells
The laser’s ability to operate in
the microscopic realm comes to
1. This poisonous snake is found only
in the Western Hemisphere It has rattles
at the end of its tail and eats mostly
small mammals and birds
2. This snake sometimes eats rattle
snakes and is not affected by their poison
. 1
// 7
the fore in experimental genetic
surgery, where a laser borehole in
a red blood cell measures only half
a micron wide. A human hair, by
comparison, is about 80 microns
wide.
Rather than just react to health
problems, lasers someday may be
able to head them off. Richard
Zare, a laser chemist at Stanford
University, has come up with a
laser-induced fluorescence, or
LIF, an ultrasensitive method of
Farm animal open house scheduled
DELAWARE COUNTY -
Chickens, baby lambs, piglets,
beef and dairy calves are housed at
the 4-H Center. Bring friends and
family to the Open House,
scheduled for Saturday, April 28
from 9 a.m. to noon.
The 4-H Center is located in Rose
Tree Park, off Route 252, just
North of Media. There will be
opportunities for children and
adults to touch the animals and
leam about agriculture.
COLORS
It is friendly to people and is welcomed
by fanners for keeping barns free of
mice and rats
3. This small, poisonous snake has
bnght red, yellow, and black nngs around
its body It has many harmless look-alikes.
4. This snake lives in Asia When both
ered, it raises the front end of its body
upnght, spreads its “hood,” and hisses.
It’s the largest poisonous snake in the
world up to 18 feet (54 m) long.
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5. This is the most common snake
found in North Amenca. It is non
poisonous and often lives near people.
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detecting chemicals in gases
liquids.
Says Zare, “I believe lasers will
play a key role in future medical
analysis to detect insulin in human
serum, for example. With LIF we
could probe blood, sweat, and tears
like checking a car’s exhaust to
leam its running condition and
determine a person’s health in
time to give him a minor tuneup,
before Jie needs a major
overhaul.”
Extension staff, volunteers and
4-hers will be on hand to talk about
farm animals, 4-H projects and
other questions you might have.
Last year’s open house was well
received by the visitors who came
by. Mark your calendars and stop
by the 4-H Center!
For more information call Bruce
Richards at 565-9070. Penn State is
an affirmative action, equal op
portunity university.