Radio Shack laser pointer for bedsores

[Celebration]

I bought a laser pointer from Radio Shack for about twenty five bucks and gave it to my mother in law to use on my father in law's bedsores. He is in home hospice care for congestive heart failure and COPD. It worked pretty well. I am sure some sort of expensive laser would have worked better, but they healed after a little bit of time. Even though they are very low power, you probably wouldn't want to use it long time. I think she used it about a minute and a half twice a day, for a lesion smaller than a dime. The hospice nurses were very pleasantly surprised at the results. (This post is for anyone with a relative with bedsores.)

[Kali]

1. interesting

any documentation or source for this?

[Celebration]

2. sort of

You can do Medline searches for LLLT (low level laser therapy) or "low intensity laser" and "wounds" and you will come up with plenty of studies. They are in much wider use in Russia, Europe, and Japan than they are here. Only fairly recently have some of them been approved. Radio Shack laser pointers are certainly low intensity-- some would say too low (5mW) or less. Thor Laser from the UK at one time had a site where you could figure out the dosage using terminology like "joules." Of course, Radio Shack lasers aren't approved or anything. But they are cheap!! I happen to know a little bit about this subject because I wrote a magazine article once on the uses of low level laser therapy in diabetes.

[Celebration]

3. list of abstacts

This Swedish website collects abstracts of studies on low level laser therapy. There are quite a few on various types of wounds. As you can see worldwide there is quite a bit of research using LLLT devices for systemic diseases as well. If people actually knew about this in the USA, I think it could save a lot of limbs. There are some really interesting Israeli studies on using a combination of LLLT and hyperbaric oxygen for non-healing wounds. I am not sure if they are listed at this website, though. Or course this isn't a Radio Shack laser pointer, but, apparently at least for my father in law, close enough.

http://www.laser.nu/lllt/science.htm