Products & Benefits

Benefits of CO₂ Laser Surgery with the OmniGuide^® BeamPath™ System

CO₂ laser surgery with the OmniGuide BeamPath system allows surgeons to operate in a flexible and precise manner. OmniGuide aims to improve your surgical outcome by offering your surgeon a no-touch, precision microsurgical instrument.

What is Laser Surgery?

Laser energy is produced through the excitation of a substance, such as a solid crystal or gas, and is typically named after this excitation medium. CO₂ lasers use carbon dioxide gas as the medium, and generate light in the infrared spectrum (10.6 micron wavelength).
Laser surgery involves cutting or treating tissue with an intense, concentrated beam of light. Laser beams vaporize target tissue by evaporating the water inside its cells.

Why Surgery with the CO₂ Laser?

The term “laser surgery” covers a wide range of lasers that interact very differently with tissue. The “color” or wavelength of a laser determines how well it is absorbed by water, pigmented tissue and blood (hemoglobin).

As the chart illustrates, CO₂ lasers have the shallowest penetration in water (the main component of living cells) among commonly-used surgical lasers. This ensures minimal penetration depth into tissues. How does this lead to a better surgical outcome for you? Better absorption in tissue means that the energy delivered by the CO₂ laser spreads through tissue in a limited manner. This, in turn, allows surgical procedures to be performed precisely, with very little damage to surrounding healthy tissue.

Why OmniGuide?

Though CO₂ lasers offer significant benefits over other surgical techniques (refer clinical publications), the absorbent nature of CO₂ laser energy means that it is not only well absorbed in soft tissue, it is also well absorbed in all known transparent materials, including glass.

Because of this limitation, CO₂ laser energy could not be transmitted through flexible fibers for three decades. Until the launch of the BeamPath fiber system, CO₂ laser energy was delivered using a bulky arrangement of arms and mirrors in the line of sight of a surgeon. This unwieldy setup prevented surgeons from performing several forms of minimally invasive surgery using the CO₂ laser energy. For example, by using the BeamPath technology, surgeons have been able to resect invasive throat cancers that before could only be accessed and removed during radical, lengthy, operations. The ability to perform surgery in a minimally invasive fashion directly benefits you by reducing your time in the operating room as well as hastening your recovery.

OmniGuide is the first and only manufacturer of unique fibers that can deliver CO₂ laser energy for minimally invasive surgery. The technology, developed at MIT, was published in two of the world’s most prominent scientific journals, Nature and Science.

OmniGuide is committed to continuously enhancing the quality of care you receive from your surgeon. OmniGuide aims to improve your surgical outcome by offering your surgeon a no-touch, precision microsurgical instrument – the BeamPath flexible CO₂ laser scalpel.