Laser Safety Standards and Measurements of Hazard Parameters for Medical Lasers

Abstract

Laser sources are nowadays largely adopted in medicine and hence they are widespread in medical environment, where patients are present and the users are not always highly specialized in managing laser sources. This has greatly boosted the attention towards safety issues related to exposure to laser beams and to strictly assess the values of well defined laser radiation standard parameters characterizing the level of hazard of laser sources. In this framework, we measured two of the most important parameters, Maximum Permissible Exposure (MPE) and Nominal Ocular Hazard Distance (NOHD), for some of the laser sources mostly employed in medicine. Additionally, we compared our results with data elaborated from standards in order to single out safe and comfortable working conditions. The results here reported have shown that information provided by manufacturers is often not enough to define the hazard level of the laser source and measurements of the main safety parameters are mandatory.