The development of advances in surgical techniques and pharmaceuticals have dramatically contributed to the improvement of global health. However, surgical procedures and pharmaceutical agents are costly and have the potential to create severe side effects and complications for patients. Interdisciplinary researchers are looking for non-pharmaceutical therapies and non-surgical interventions to provide effective treatment for a broad range of medical conditions. This presentation describes one of the most promising therapies-photobiomodulation.

After more than fifty (50) years of clinical use, no serious side effects or adverse reactions of using phototherapy as a medical treatment modality have been observed. Phototherapy affects the natural and basic mechanism of virtually all human cells and restores impaired function, triggering a subsequent cascade of positive therapeutic effects.

Phototherapy currently is being used in virtually every medical specialty including dermatology, plastic surgery, family medicine, vascular surgery, thoracic surgery, ophthalmology, ENT, gastroenterology, hematology, oncology, orthopedics, endocrinology, esthetics, urology, neurology and neurosurgery to name a few. In general, phototherapy serves to improve wound healing, cellular function, reduction of edema, healing of neurological injuries, increased microcirculation and provides intrinsic pain relief. More than 3,000 scientific archived references by the Swedish Laser Society report restorative, therapeutic and healing results from the use of photobiomodulation therapy.

As with all types of scientific work, new discoveries generate new questions. In spite of tremendous advances in the scientific understanding of the medical effects of light we still do not know all the optimal parameters. We also are still struggling as clinicians and scientists to understand the scientific term which best describes the medical effects of light on the modulation of human cell function.

Despite the fact that we are still learning the pathophysiology every day and searching to find the terminology to describe the effects that we are observing it is important to know that clinicians and researchers alike know enough to make phototherapy a mainstream clinical treatment modality. The application of phototherapy inducing photobiomodulation effects has changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of patients and will continue to grow as our understanding of the healing abilities of the application of light continues to improve.