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Laser toenail ablation

 Ablate!
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Toenails can get gnarly. But lasers can vaporize any organic matter. The LTA device fits over the toe and holds it steady. One laser assesses viability of tissue via reflectance: normal well perfused tissue will reflect the laser at a given frequency (like a pulse oximeter). If not viable (and therefore toenail, or possibly callus/wart) there is a burst o flaser energy to that spot. A vacuum sucks air thru the LTA, cooling the toe and removing vapor.

Iterative ablation yields a baby smooth and well groomed toe!

—bungston, Aug 24 2010

Laser toenail fungus http://www.google.c...&q=laser+toe+fungus
A popular ad on local radio shills one of these [csea, Aug 25 2010]

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       // Iterative ablation //   

       That sounds so clinical and precise ... can we use it ? It sounds so much better than "Keep blasting away until you hit something expensive".
—8th of 7, Aug 24 2010
   

       Could we program it to sculpt the nails a bit?
—baconbrain, Aug 24 2010
   

       Can the vapour be captured and used to punish juvenile miscreants?
—xenzag, Aug 24 2010
   

       By casting voodoo spells on them?
—baconbrain, Aug 24 2010
   

       Pulse oximeter doesn't reflect, it transmits. But that's just pedantry, the underlying logic isn't affected.   

       More germane quibbles:   

       1) Would keratin vaporize, or would it burn? You need it to vaporize, I think, so it wafts away on the breeze. If it burns, you'll deposit smouldering black crud on the nailbed, won't you?
2) Heat transmission through the as-yet-unvaporized nail to the nailbed. If there's too much of that, this'll be painful. If keratin actually does vaporize , that'll help with this.		   

       A more modest version would skip the "callus/wart" and "baby smooth" part, and just cut the toenail, using machine vision to detect the line where the nail juts out beyond the nailbed.
—mouseposture, Aug 24 2010
   

       /Heat/ yes. This is why small laser pulses are used with breeze in between. Water might carry away heat even better and would not be difficult.   

       /where the nail juts out beyond the nailbed./ This needs to also ablate those gnarled and fungus-infested nails that are higher than they are long.   

       The callus/wart piece was from our PR people. Strictly nail it is.
—bungston, Aug 25 2010
   


 

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