Laser surgery for cervical intraepithelial neoplasia.

: The laser has provided a relatively easy and safe method for treating all types of CIN. The advantages of lasers include great conservatism due to tissue sparing, great precision because of microsurgical method, combination of excisions and vaporization possible, suitable for therapy of multifocal disease, uncluttered field, and good hemostasis. Although other modalities have also been used successfully in the therapy of this disease, it appears that none are so versatile as CO2 laser or possess its ability to accurately treat the multifocal disease that may involve large surface areas of the lower reproductive tract. It seems unlikely that any of the cervical ablation methods--chemical destruction, hot cautery, diathermy electrode, cryoprobe, laser, and diathermy loop--will completely disappear from use in the near future. Ablation is an attractive alternative to cold-knife excision in properly triaged patients, since it is almost always an outpatient procedure done without anesthesia or with only local anesthesia. Most importantly, a large number of patients have completely visible lesions of a severity less than that of in situ cancer; they really do not need excisional conization by any technique and benefit by quick ablation of the transformation zone. A conization, to be diagnostic and therapeutic, must remove the entire transformation zone to the proper depth. This procedure is almost always attended by a higher morbidity rate than is simple ablation. Laser excisional conization and the large loop excision of the transformation zone procedure are similar in a number of respects, because the operator must have certain capabilities and a through understanding of the disease to be treated to perform the operation correctly.