Posters

The impact of an active air cooling cavity on the consistency and stability of energy delivered from a Q-Switched Nd:YAG laser

Poster Details

First Author: I.Singh USA

Co Author(s):                     

Abstract Details

Purpose:

To evaluate if an air cooling cavity reduces and or stabilizes the delivery of energy emitted over a few hundred shots from a newly designed Q -Switched Nd:YAG laser.

Setting:

Testing was done in a laboratory setting

Methods:

A test system was set-up using a 1064-nm, Q-Switched Nd:YAG laser with an air cooling module (Ultra Q Relfex, Ellex Adelaide). The system was set to deliver 2.0 mj per shot and 300 shots fired with the air-cooling enabled. Next, the system was turned off for 30 minutes, the air-cooling module was disabled and a second round of 300 shots was fired. Actual energy delivered with each shot was recorded.

Results:

The first round of 300 shots, fired at 1 shot per second, energy ranged from 1.99 mj to 2.44 mj with a standard deviation as a percent of mean at 3.53%. After powering down, the second round of 300 shots was fired at 2.0 mj, with energy ranging from 1.85 mj to 2.93 mj and a standard deviation as a percent of mean at 10.05%. The actual energy increased from the physician selected energy of 2.0 mj to a maximum detected energy of 2.93mj, which was an approximately a 46.5% increase. This increase was well outside of standard safety tolerances.

Conclusions:

An Air-cooling module in the laser cavity does help to maintain a stable range of energy delivery from a Q-switched YAG laser over hundreds of shots. These findings suggest using a system with a cooling cavity would be advantageous when performing procedures that require a large number of shots, such as in YAG vitreolysis.

Financial Disclosure:

... receives consulting fees, retainer, or contract payments from a company producing, developing or supplying the product or procedure presented