Understanding the Instruments: Intracorporeal Lithotripsy—Laser

Abstract

Laser is an acronym for “Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.” The main structure of a laser system includes a pumping source, an optical oscillator, and a laser amplifier. The optical oscillator gener­ally consists of an optical resonator with mir­rors and an amplifier. The laser beam is generated by stimulated emission. The Ho:YAG laser used in the urology field is a flash-lamped pumping Q-switched laser sys­tem, but a thulium fiber laser is a diode laser pumping master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) system. The lasers mainly used in the urology field are the neodymium-doped YAG (Nd:YAG) laser frequency-converted to 532 nm by potas­sium titanyl phosphate (KTP), the thulium- or holmium-doped YAG (Tm:YAG or Ho:YAG) laser at 2013 nm or 2120 nm, and the thulium- doped double-clad fiber (Tm fiber) laser