At Yaletown Pet Hospital, we like to keep on top of current developments that we feel may enhance how we practice veterinary medicine. To that effect, over the past few years we have acquired several new ‘toys’ that we now find indispensible: dental x-rays, digital x-rays, and an in-house blood analyzer, to name a few.
LiteCure Companion Therapy Laser
LiteCure Companion Therapy Laser
To this list we have recently added a Class IV Therapy Laser. This is not the James Bond, cut-sheets-of-metal-in-half variety. And while this type of laser is in the same class as cutting lasers used in surgery, its effects are much more subtle. Therapy lasers are used to enhance or promote tissue healing by using infrared laser energy stimulating tissue at a cellular level.
Think back to High School Biology class- within the nucleus of cells in every tissue are energy-producing bodies called mitochondria. The mitochondria can be stimulated by exposure to light of a variety of wavelengths. The infrared wavelengths produced by therapy lasers not only stimulate the mitochondria very effectively, but can also penetrate well below the skin surface to stimulate cellular activity and tissue repair in deeper tissues- a process known as photobiostimulation.
This enhanced cellular activity produces multiple beneficial effects: pain relief, reduction in inflammation, and accelerated tissue healing. The applications for such a therapy modality are numerous, and we hope to be able to introduce laser therapy to a large number of our patients to enhance our current treatment of various disease conditions.
Several health conditions in your cat may be helped with laser therapy
Almost all inflammatory conditions, chronic and acute, can benefit from laser treatment. Acute diseases like ear infections (those nasty, red, hot painful ears that your dog won’t let you touch), bladder infections and inflammation, and hot spots can benefit. Chronic conditions like arthritis, back pain, and stomatitis (painful inflammation of the gums seen often in cats) are equally likely to benefit.
Many of your pets’ conditions may currently be well controlled medically- non-steroid anti-inflammatory medications for arthritis, for example. Addition of a treatment modality like laser therapy may reduce your pet’s dependence on medication, and in some cases may allow us to stop medications completely as the cumulative effects of laser therapy become more evident.
For acute conditions, your pet may require only one or two treatments to reap the benefits. For more chronic conditions, a series of treatments will likely be recommended, starting with two or three treatments per week (again, the effects are cumulative). Once improvement is noted, we can reduce the frequency of treatments, eventually weaning down to a maintenance dose, which may be as infrequent as once every 4-6 weeks.
A Therapy Laser can help many of your dog's health problems
We will also recommend incorporating a laser treatment in all our elective and non-elective surgeries, as well as with every dental cleaning. The benefits of these treatments are enhanced tissue healing and reduced post-surgical pain and inflammation.
If you’re interested in learning more about how our therapy laser can benefit your pet, feel free to contact us by phone or e-mail, or check out the Companion Therapy Laser website at: www.companiontherapylaser.com
