Abstract: A technique is disclosed for wound debridement in which a pulsed CO.sub.2 laser beam is caused to impinge upon exposed tissue with individual pulses sufficiently energetic to ablate a thin layer of tissue. Each pulse has a time duration short enough to cause ablation but long enough so that it does not cause atmospheric breakdown. The CO.sub.2 laser, with a wavelength in the far infrared region, is operated to produce a pulsed beam with individual pulses having an energy of about one joule per pulse or greater. The beam is focused to produce a beam diameter with a fluence of approximately ten joules per square centimeter at the tissue to be ablated and with a pulse repetition rate of approximately one hundred pulses per second and a pulse duration between one microsecond and ten microseconds. In operation, the ablation of eschar is achieved over a relatively wide range of angles of incidence without need for change of the beam parameters.

Abstract: A technique is disclosed for wound debridement in which a pulsed CO.sub.2 laser beam is caused to impinge upon exposed tissue with individual pulses sufficiently energetic to ablate a thin layer of tissue. Each pulse has a time duration short enough to avoid deleterious heat penetration but long enough so that it does not cause atmospheric breakdown. The CO.sub.2 laser, with a wavelength in the far infrared region, is operated to produce a pulsed beam with individual pulses having an energy of about one joule per pulse or greater. The beam is focused to produce a beam diameter with a fluence of approximately ten joules per square centimeter at the tissue to be ablated and with a pulse repetition rate of approximately one hundred pulses per second and a pulse duration between one microsecond and ten microseconds.