Several laser manufacturers talk about super pulsing.

Some mention that their laser super pulses at a billionth of a second.  One needs to realize how short a burst of energy this really is and how therapeutic that time frame can be.

Secondly, super pulsing can only be capable of what the laser diode can handle structurally.

If your laser is designed to be a 500mw (Class IIIb laser), how can the diode take a burst of energy that is 1000 times its normal operating power level.

Imagine a 60w light bulb given a jolt of electricity 100 times its median value.

Even a millisecond of energy would burst the bulb.

Laser diodes are manufactured to accept certain and maximal levels of power, not 1000 times what it was manufactured for.

Super pulsing may and could be a viable tool.

However, some claims appear to be beyond what the physical capability of the laser diode can handle based on their manufactured capability.

Several laser companies in order to market their lasers use Techno -Babble which is using technical sounding terms, which are not necessarily proven,  to impress potential customers.

Super pulsing may give a high peak power, but the average output of super pulsed lasers is comparatively low.

Even though peak power of the super pulsed laser may be very high, it lasts for an extremely short time compared to the pulsed cycle, resulting in an average output power that is usually a thousand times lower than the peak power.  For clinical use, it is the AVERAGE POWER that is beneficial.

Some manufacturers prefer to label these lasers as “very strong” and state only the peak power which then can be in the order of 100 watts.  This sounds impressive, but typically these lasers emit 10 – 100 mW average power, and this is what counts for treatment.

One manufacturer promotes it’s super pulsed lasers as having 25,000 mW or 50,000 mW of power.  It has just a few presets.  To calculate the average power, one must only know the Peak Power, the Pulse Frequency and the Pulse Duration.

If the manufacturers “highest” power option of 50,000 mW is used, and consider the longest possible pulse duration is .0000002 sec for calculation purposes, the AVERAGE OUTPUT POWER is only .050 mW or fifty millionths of one Watt.

With is very low average power, it will take twenty thousand seconds or 5.6 hours for this manufacturer’s laser to deliver one Joule.

When speaking to a sales rep, many of them will not really know the so called scientific principles regarding Super Pulsing, and resort to more Techno Babble in order to sell a laser that actually delivers less.

It should be noted, that a world renowned-laser expert on Class IV laser and physics said the following:

“In physics there is no such thing as ‘super-pulsing.’ There is no way a nano-second pulse of light can influence organic tissue in vivo, other than to ‘blind’ it with high luminescence. Photo-chemical changes occur when an energy threshold transference (volume of energy) is achieved – nanosecond-pulse lasers produce minimal energy transference, far too low to produce a photo chemical change.”