Low level laser therapy (LLLT) is a developing medical field that involves the exposure of tissue to low level laser light for the purpose of stimulating or inhibiting cellular functions, which can have positive medical effects. Know also as photobiomodulation and cold laser therapy, LLLT is very much still a controversial area of medicine due to the fact that the effectiveness of some of its uses has not yet been thoroughly tested and/or proven.
While some low level laser treatments have been officially approved by the FDA, the FDA still categorizes the overall field of LLLT as an experimental medical field. Research and data has shown convincingly that LLLT is beneficial in the treatment of neck pain and other musculatroy ailments, but in treating things like burn wounds, the exact effectiveness of LLLT has yet to be officially determined.
Healing burn wounds has long been a problematic issue for physicians. This is because burn wounds easily worsen with hypertrophy and contracture. There is currently no treatment that ensures 100% healing of burn wounds, but low level laser therapy appears to be a promising alternative to conventional treatment.
The idea is that, at certain levels of intensity, monochromatic laser light can help tissue regeneration and alleviate pain and inflammation. How the photochemical process that enables this to happen works, exactly, is still not entirely clear to scientists.
Institutions like the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality have tested the effects of low level laser therapy on the treatment of burns and come up with inconclusive evidence, meaning that the inferential relationship between the use of low level laser light and the quicker/better healing of burn wounds was not strong enough to suggest that LLLT has a significantly beneficial effect on burn wound treatment.
Other researchers, however, have come up with overwhelmingly positive evidence to suggest that low level laser therapy does have a positive effect on the treatment of burn wounds. One study, the results of which were published in the medical journal Burns, showed that wounds treated with LLLT, like Erchonia's cold laser, did in fact display significant improvement over the burns that were treated without the use of LLLT.
Because of such contradictions, companies in the field of low level laser technology are still working to come up with legitimate data in hopes of pushing LLLT into the world of mainstream medicine.
About the Author:
Ryan Frank is a 23 year writer and blogger living in San Diego, CA.
