Using a laser during pregnancy
Laser technologies are used in various fields of medicine – surgery, dentistry, physiotherapy, gynecology, dermatology, etc. Almost every woman in modern society has ever visited a salon or clinic for a laser procedure, whether it is a simple laser hair removal or laser vision correction. Therefore, every woman is interested in questions:
- How safe is the laser effect on the body during pregnancy.
- What procedures can be done during pregnancy?
- At what period of pregnancy is the medical laser absolutely safe?
And this applies not only to pregnant patients, but also to doctors who work on the laser.
Are there any risks and side effects during laser procedures
Pregnancy is a special condition in the life of any woman. At this time, large-scale hormonal changes occur in the body, which lead to a very high sensitivity of the body to any external influences. For this reason, many doctors are reinsured and do not recommend performing laser therapy during the first and third trimester of pregnancy.
This occurs mainly for psychological reasons. Most doctors are well aware that the maximum penetration depth of the laser beam into the skin is no more than 4 mm (neodymium radiation for fair skin), therefore, the laser can not cause any harm to the child and mother if the treatment protocols are observed. On the other hand, it is impossible, unfortunately, to exclude cases that, due to the strong sensitivity of the body, the expectant mother may feel worse at any moment, etc., and this could theoretically be connected with the laser procedure in the clinic or salon. 
Therefore, the bulk of doctors do not want to risk it at all and do, for example, cosmetology laser procedures only at 12-25 weeks of pregnancy.
The main difficulty lies in the fact that, despite the fact that many articles have been written on laser medicine, the issue of the effect of the laser on the body during pregnancy is not addressed in them, both for ethical and legislative reasons. At a serious level, only a few studies have been carried out, starting with the advent of the laser (from the 60s of the 20th century). In these studies, a total of several hundred people were involved. During the study, 2 cases of preterm birth were recorded a few weeks after laser therapy, but because this refers to less than 1% of women, and while the authors did not reveal any other deviations from the norm, it was suggested that the laser is absolutely safe for both the mother and the fetus of the unborn child. Because Since the number of studies for more than half a century of laser medicine is still very small, it is certainly premature to draw an unambiguous conclusion, but an indirect confirmation of safety is a very large number of laser procedures, primarily cosmetic, that are performed by pregnant women in different countries. In the European medical database on the risk and health of medical devices, there is not a single documented case of the negative effects of laser radiation on the body of pregnant women, otherwise, such claims, given the large number of devices, and, accordingly, laser salons and clinics, certainly would have been.
Can a pregnant doctor work with a laser, what the state says
In different countries, the attitude towards the risk of laser radiation during pregnancy is certainly different. If we talk about the legislation of the Russian Federation, then the heads of clinics and doctors should first of all remember “SanPin 5804-91. Sanitary standards and rules for the operation of lasers. ” It states that during pregnancy, doctors are prohibited from working on laser devices.
Because in the legislation and psychology of doctors and patients there is a certain contradiction, then we can give an example with medicines. The instructions of most medicines write that “it is necessary to carefully study the potential benefits of therapy for the expectant mother and the possible risk for the unborn child”. This unwritten rule in most cases is worth remembering when using the laser during pregnancy.