Use of the Excimer laser in fibrocartilaginous excision from adjacent bony stroma: a preliminary investigation.

Denuding cartilage from bone with an Excimer laser appears to be a precise operation in which the underlying bone is unpenetrated by the Excimer laser beam while the cartilage is completely ablated. The discovery of this property of the Excimer laser which allows the cartilage to be ablated precisely to the bone-cartilage junction has exciting implications for fiberoptic arthroscopy.