波長5.75μmのナノ秒パルスレーザーによる粥状動脈硬化症の低侵襲血管形成術の開発

抄録

Novel laser angioplasty with high ablation efficiency and low arterial wall injury is desirable. Recently, XeCl excimer laser coronary angioplasty (ELCA) has gained more attention for the treatment of serious stenosis by the formation of multiple plaques within the arteries. ELCA treatments achieve less thermal damages. However, dissections or perforations of coronary arteries limit its application. Mid-infrared laser with a wavelength of 5.75 μm is selectively well absorbed in C=O stretching vibration mode of ester bonds in cholesterol esters. The purpose of this study is to develop the novel laser angioplasty using the nanosecond pulsed laser with a wavelength of 5.75 μm for the safe atherosclerosis treatment. In this study, we used a mid-infrared tunable solid-state laser which is operated by difference-frequency generation (wavelength; 5.75 μm, pulse width; 5 ns, pulse duration; 10 Hz) as a treatment light source, and a thoracic aorta of WHHLMI rabbit as an atherosclerosis model. This study showed that nanosecond pulsed laser irradiations with a wavelength of 5.75 μm realized the selective and less-invasive treatment of atherosclerotic plaques.