THOR Literature watch for May 2013 Low Level Laser Therapy / Cold Laser / Photobiomodulation PBM

Posted on 20 June 2013 by James Carroll

25 new LLLT papers for you this month including clinical trials on Bells palsy, orthodontic pain, herpes zoster ophthalmicus and orthognathic surgery. There are reviews on dentine hypersensitivity, muscle contractile function, postexercise recovery and infarct volume after stroke. Some interesting laboratory studies on bone marrow in mice, early vs delayed LLLT application on nerve regeneration, bone remodeling during induced tooth movement in rats and LED vs ultrasound for tendinitis.
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Posted in Research | 2 Comments

THOR at Harvard MIT

Posted on 6 June 2013 by James Carroll

David Sengeh has been developing powered limbs at MIT for amputees (like the bionic man). Where the powered limb attaches to the body (the stump of the original leg) it gets very sore. David has been using our standard THOR products to heal the stump and reduce pain. It works very well, though it takes a lot of time to treat the whole area. I am in Boston now to help David start clinical trials with a new device we designed that will treat the whole stump. The amputee puts the the leg stump into the LED treatment cylinder and gets a complete treatment in just one minute :-)

MIT

Posted in Special Feature, THE FUTURE OF PBM/LLLT | 5 Comments

Convince if possible, confuse if necessary, and corrupt if nothing else works, is THOR complicit?

Posted on 16 May 2013 by James Carroll

In the BMJ Last Saturday Anita Jain wrote “Gold jewellery, cars or an exotic foreign holiday, these are among the luxury gifts listed in a parliamentary committee report as being used by pharmaceutical companies to coax doctors into prescribing their drugs”. She goes on to describe the “3C strategy” employed by drug companies. “convince if possible, confuse if necessary, and corrupt if nothing else works”. Many (she says) will say an emphatic no to luxury gifts, but what about discounts, conference fees, hotels and flights?

Since we have been working with more doctors these days (rather than therapists) I am being approached with requests for hotel and flight costs and I confess I have conceded.

Why does this happen?
a) Because this is the world they live in (i.e. it is normal to have industry pay)
b) Academic and educational budgets are tight and industry has more money than it knows what to do with (they think).

So what should I do ?

I have conceded and paid out a few times, but not with any enthusiasm as we are not yet making $ billions in profits, but my conscience wrestles with it. I do not want to be guilty of behaving like bad pharma but then again I want our product to be accepted by mainstream medicine, so what should I do?

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Posted in Rants | 8 Comments

THOR Literature watch for April 2013 Low Level Laser Therapy / Cold Laser / Photobiomodulation PBM –

Posted on 13 May 2013 by James Carroll

33 new LLLT papers for you this month including: a review of 21 papers on muscle performance, fatigue and repair, a controlled multicenter trial on male pattern baldness, another trial on oral mucositis and how about this, 810nm laser ameliorates diabetes!
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Posted in Research | on THOR Literature watch for April 2013 Low Level Laser Therapy / Cold Laser / Photobiomodulation PBM –

How THOR pulses affect dose (they dont)

Posted on 29 April 2013 by James Carroll

THOR laser and LED treatment probes always give the same average power regardless if pulsed or continuous.

THOR pulses are not a fixed pulse width, the pulses are always 88% on 12% off so no matter what pulse frequency is used the the average power remains the same, even when compared with continuous.

This is because we increase the peak power in pulsed mode to compensate for the period when the beam is off.

At say 2.5Hz the THOR pulse width is calculated  0.88 / 2.5  = 0.352 seconds (352ms)

At say 10Hz the THOR pulse width is calculated 0.88 / 10 = 0.088 seconds (88ms)

At say 100Hz the THOR pulse width is calculated 0.88 / 100 = 0.0088 seconds (8.8ms)

How THOR pulses affect dose (they dont)

Posted in Special Feature | on How THOR pulses affect dose (they dont)

THOR Literature watch for March 2013 Low Level Laser Therapy / Cold Laser / Photobiomodulation PBM

Posted on 15 April 2013 by James Carroll

28 new papers for you this month, starting with the most entertaining: “successful management of acute-onset torticollis in a giraffe” which included a laser to reduce “cervical muscle hypertonicity”, an RCT on cellulite (see commentary), an analysis of 589 tooth extractions in patients under bisphosphonate therapy following LLLT, chronic rhinosinusitis, oral lichen planus, combined bone marrow aspirate and LLLT on bone healing, mesenchymal stem cells and LLLT on peripheral nerve regeneration and more …
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Posted in Research | on THOR Literature watch for March 2013 Low Level Laser Therapy / Cold Laser / Photobiomodulation PBM

Unbelievable results

Posted on 14 April 2013 by James Carroll

At first glance this cellulite paper looks like a well designed study, but if you are familiar with LLLT parameters then you may notice something odd about them:
6 treatments (3 x week for 2 weeks) this is probably a good treatment interval
8 x 10 inches (516 cm2) that is a very large area
5 x 17mW Green 532nm this is a poor penetrating wavelength
Combined power of 102mW that is a tiny amount of power for such a large area
Irradiance 0.2mW/cm2 that is less than sunshine on a clear day
15 mins twice (two side of the body) that is a long treatment time
Fluence (dose) 0.18J/cm2 per side that is not enough to do anything

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Posted in Rants | on Unbelievable results