ABSTRACT
Medical laser applications started shortly after the first laser was built at the beginning of the 1960s. Zweng and Goldman successfully used a pulsed ruby and a cw argon laser in order to treat diseases in the eye and on the skin [1, 2]. There was almost no medical speciality where the laser was not tried out in order to establish new laser-based therapeutic and diagnostic procedures [3]. Besides ophthalmology and dermatology, there were many other applications,particularly in urology and gastroenterology,which found their way into clinical practice [4]. At the beginning of the development of medical laser technology, tissue destruction (coagulation, haemostasis and surgical ablation) was mainly used. In the course of a better understanding of the basics of laser-tissue interaction mechanisms, new treatment principles such as photochemical effects in photodynamic therapy [5] and plasma-mediated photomechanical effects in laser lithotripsy [6] and photodisruption [7] were established.
