Laser safety.

Safety has always been an important aspect of any laser application in surgery and medicine. In any review of the laser surgery literature, several issues continue to dominate. These issues include: wearing eye protectors, dealing with the plume of vaporized tissue, and controlling potential fire hazards. No one denies that lasers can pose a serious hazard to the eye, but the decision to wear eye protectors in all procedures has been frequently questioned. The degree of effort needed to minimize the very serious risk from chronic breathing of vaporized tissue also requires judgment. Aside from a few eye injuries from a laser beam exposure, most serious accidental injuries (and even deaths) reported to date from the laser beam itself can be traced to the ignition of surgical drapes and airway tubes.