Cold Laser Therapy

Cold Low Energy level Laser Soft Therapy Photobiomodulation Phototherapy - Whats in a name ?

At the NZ2008 laser meeting last week we debated the nomenclature surrounding the popularly named “Cold Laser Therapy” as it seems most often called in the USA. In the UK the most common phrase now is Laser Therapy though for a while it was Laser Biostimulation, US government employed scientists call it Photobiomodulation, it used to be called Laser Biostimulation by the American Society for Lasers in Surgery and Medicine, who last year adopted Photobiomodulation instead. Pubmed have chosen LLLT (stands for Low Level Laser Therapy) as the MeSH term (MeSH stands for Medical Subject Heading) however they lave used that label for almost every form of medical laser treatment (low level or otherwise). This was a term coined by Oshiro and Calderhead back on the 1980’s. For the record I am fan of calling it Photobiomodulation and I have managed to get that as the term adopted on Wikipedia a couple of years back (hooray for me).

This exercise was triggered by an article in the Independant newspaper today “Doctors warn of ‘cowboy clinics’ if laser therapy is deregulated“. It is an article about government deregulation of IPL for hair removal and is just one tiny example of how the distinctions around medical laser devices are not being made. I wonder if the journalist has any idea that at another end of the scale lasers improve tissue repair, reduce inflammation, reduce pain and some would argue even stimulate hair growth (Mester to name but one example).

Here are some words and phrases I have collected over the years:

Bioregulating Laser
Biostimulating Laser
Broad Band Radiation Therapy
Cold Laser Therapy
Diode Laser Therapy
He-Ne Laser therapy
helium-neon laser irradiation
Infrared laser light
Laser Acupuncture
Laser Biostimulation
Laser Irradiation
Laser Phototherapy
Laser Therapy
LED phototherapy
LED therapy
LELT (Low Energy Laser Therapy)
LEPT (Low Energy Photon Therapy)
Light Therapy
light-emitting diode phototherapy
LILT (Low Intensity Laser Therapy)
LLLT (Low level Laser Therapy)
low fluence diode laser irradiation
low level light treatment
Low Light Laser Therapy
Low Power Laser Irradiation
Low Power Laser Therapy
Low Reactive Level Laser Therapy
lower-level laser therapy
Mid Laser Therapy
Monochromatic Infra Red Energy
Monochromatic Infrared Photo Energy
Monochromatic Light Therapy
Monochromatic phototherapy
near-infrared light therapy
NIR laser therapy
nonablative laser therapy
PBM (Photobiomodulation)
Photo Irradiation
Photobioactivation
Photobiomodulation
Photobiostimulation
Photomedicine
Photon Therapy
Photoradiation
Photostimulation
Phototherapy
Physiotherapy Laser
Polarised Polychromatic Light
Polarised Radiation
Red light phototherapy
Soft Laser Therapy
Therapeutic Laser

P.S. it is also quite common for laser wavelength and / or lasing medium to be added to the title . common examples are 810nm laser diode therapy for xyz. In case you are not familiar with the common wavelengths and materials used they are: 660nm 810nm 830nm 904nm

Full list as follows: 632.8 650nm 635nm 660nm 670nm 680nm 750nm 780nm 705nm 908nm 810nm 820nm 830nm 850nm 870nm 880nm 890nm 904nm 905nm 950nm

Materials: GaAlAs, Gallium Aluminium Arsenide, GaAs, Gallium Arsenide, HeNe, Helium Neon, AlGaInP, Aluminium Gallium Indium Phosphide.