There are many different types of therapy lasers. Class IV lasers for pain, Class IIIb therapy lasers, Class III laser therapy equipment, even class II lasers. One parameter that separates these lasers from one another is power. What role does power play in achieving clinical results?
Power impacts the functional depth of penetration of the laser light. The combination of treatment time and power determines the tissue depth that receives a therapeutic dose of energy. If the therapy laser equipment you are using has low power, the total number of Joules you can deliver to relevant depths for treating most musculoskeletal conditions in a realistic treatment time is very low.
For example, if we want to treat the thoracic spine on a 200-pound male and we determine that our treatment area is 300 cm2, since it is a deep condition we want to treat with 10 Joules/cm2 our target dose is 3,000 Joules (300cm2 x 10 J/cm2 = 3,000 J). Below is an example of how long it would take to deliver 3,000 J of therapeutic energy with 4 different lasers of variable power:
5mW Laser = 10,000 minutes (166.7 hours)
500mW Laser = 100 minutes (1 hour 40 minutes)
3W Laser = 16.7 minutes
10W Laser = 5 minutes
Therefore, treating with a low powered laser will cause you to deliver less than the identified therapeutic dose of 3,000 Joules simply because the treatment time is unrealistic. LightForce Therapy Lasers enable you to deliver power from 500mW to 15 Watts giving you the flexibility you need to give every condition the therapeutic dose it needs.
