Anyone heard of this? Laser Therapy? Does it work?
 

This came in a email from my vets office.... Has anyone heard of this? Pro's Con's ?


Class IV Therapy Laser
What is Laser Therapy? Laser Therapy is a surgery-free, drug-free, noninvasive treatment to reduce pain, reduce inflammation, and speed healing. Class IV Deep Tissue Laser Therapy uses a beam of laser light to deeply penetrate tissue without damaging it. Laser energy induces a biological response in the cells called "photo-bio-modulation", which leads to reduced pain, reduced inflammation, and increased healing speed. (Mo thinks it's really cool!)

How it Works The laser light is delivered through a noninvasive handpiece to treat the affected area. Your pet may feel a gentle and soothing warmth. Most treatments take a matter of minutes.

What are the Costs? Treatment protocols are unique to each patient and condition. Therefore, treatments will vary in time complexity and cost. Laser therapy can be used to enhance other treatment plans recommended by your veterinarian.


Laser Therapy has been scientifcally proven to be successful in treating post-surgical pain and many acute conditions such as wounds, allergies, infections, cuts and bites, inflammations, tooth extraction pain relief, sprains, strains and fractures, post-surgical healing and pain relief. It can also help treat chronic conditions like degenerative joint disease, inflammatory bowel disease, periodontal disease, lick granulomas, geriatric care, hip dysplasia, feline acne, tendonitis, arthritis, and much more.

The clinic I used to work for offers laser therapy, it was called the K-laser. We had a lot of clients try it with pretty good results. Of course that's pretty much all anecdotal. Only thing I don't like about it is that it's something you more or less sign on to long term. We typically did several sessions in the beginning - week 1 - 3 txts, week 2-2 txts, week 3 - 1 txt, then every 2-3 weeks after until the pet can go every 4 weeks or as needed. What is making you consider laser therapy?

My dog had laser therapy for a muscle pull (rehab specialist at the University of Florida vet school is very big on laser), along with ultrasound treatment- I think it was $75 for the combined treatment and he was prescribed 2-3 treatments a week for three weeks. My regular vet uses laser therapy as well. Many people in agility use it for various injuries. The main pro is that it's a non-invasive treatment for many injuries, and I don't know of any cons.

It seems to help Grim ......... of course that is a subjective opinion on my part. Not black and white.

Oh it was just an email I got today. My old boy is slowing down and has a bit of arthritis in his hindquarters. I just wondered if it was something that might help him. Is a treatment very expensive?

I wish my vet offered laser therapy -- I'd do it without hesitation for arthritis. My vet is supposed to be buying the machine to offer it later this year, so I'm hopeful we'll do it soon.

If your guy is slowing due to arthritis, keep in mind that they are usually hurting for a while before we notice it. If he's slowing, he's likely hurting. I didn't realize that until we put mine on Rimadyl as a "test" to see if it was pain that was causing the slowdown -- and he perked right up. We didn't want to keep him on a NSAID long term, though, so we looked at other options. In addition to this laser therapy, please look into Adequan -- there are many threads about it on these boards (that's where I learned about it). I honestly believe it turned the clock backward at least three years on my senior guy's mobility with his hip arthritis--he went from being slow and moving carefully, back to wanting to jog and play, over the course of about a month. It's a long-term commitment to maintenance shots, after the loadings dose, but my experience has made me a huge fan of it--it helps them to rebuild cartilage inside the sinovial joints, instead of just masking pain.

Good luck! If you do the laser therapy, please come back and let us know how it worked for him.

I would use it as well, and know of a couple senior dogs that showed improvement with treatments.

A few of our vets have one, we used it for a spinal injury without a lot of success but I think that was partly because the dog was so tense and stressed out nothing was helping at that point.
That's when we discovered neurtontin (gabapentin) and methocarbamol, which, when combined, fixed her back almost immediately.

Cheyenne has laser treatment when she had issues with healing after getting her rear dew claws removed. She had been back to the vet several times for ripping out stitches, and just taking FOREVER to heal. Then they did the laser treatment, and within just a few days, the healing was amazing! So glad that they offered it! I truly believe it helped speed up her recovery!

a couple of my dogs had laser treatments, the last was Dodge who was 12 at the time, had some neuro damage from chronic tick disease, it DID help him, I paid 50$ for 45 minutes , this wa 3 years ago.