History of LLLT started in 1967, a few years after the first working laser was invented, Endre Mester in Semmelweis University, Budapest, Hungary wanted to test if laser radiation might cause cancer in mice [1]. He shaved the dorsal hair, divided them into two groups and gave a laser treatment with a low powered ruby laser (694 nm) to one group. They did not get cancer, and to his surprise the hair on the treated group grew back more quickly than the untreated group. This was the first demonstration of “laser biostimulation”.
Since then, medical treatment with coherent-light sources (lasers) or noncoherent light (light-emitting diodes, LEDs) has passed through its childhood and adolescence. Currently, low-level laser (or light) therapy (LLLT), also known as “cold laser”, “soft laser”, “biostimulation” or “photobiomodulation” is practiced as part of physical therapy in many parts of the world. In fact, light therapy is one of the oldest therapeutic methods used by humans (historically as solar therapy by Egyptians, later as UV therapy for which Nils Finsen won the Nobel prize in 1904 [2]). The use of lasers and LEDs as light sources was the next step in the technological development of light therapy, which is now applied to many thousands of people worldwide each day.
The medical director of the Pain Clinic and Laser Center of Locarno, Switzerland, Zlatko Simunovic, M.D., F.M.H., writes:
“Laser therapy [LLLT] is a natural and biological therapy, because even from early ages, man has considered the light of the Sun to be responsible for his health. Human kind simply cannot live without the light, a fact proved by evident lack of light in the sick cell.” [3] Laser light restores health to just such an ailing cell.
See Professor Endre Mester The Father of PBM
1. E. Mester, B. Szende and P. Gartner, The effect of laser beams on the growth of hair in mice, Radiobiol Radiother (Berl) 9 (1968) 621-6. 2. R. Roelandts, The history of phototherapy: something new under the sun?, J Am Acad Dermatol 46 (2002) 926-30. 3. Simunovic, Z. “History,” Chapter I in Lasers in Medicine and Dentistry: Basic Science and Up-to-Date Clinical Application of Low Energy-Level Laser Therapy LLLT. Editor/Publisher Zlatko. Simunovic, (Locarno, Switzerland: Zlatko Simunovic, March 2000), pp. 20 &21.References to History of LLLT
