Mechanism of human nail poration by high-repetition-rate, femtosecond laser ablation.

Optical poration, or drilling, of the human nail has the potential to drastically improve transungual drug delivery. However, this approach is accompanied by thermal damage to the nail tissue surrounding the laser radiation-created pore. In this paper, fluorescence microscopy has been employed to quantitatively evaluate thermal damage to the nail induced by laser ablation with 80 MHz, nanojoule, femtosecond pulses delivered via a hollow-core fibre.

Precise laser poration to control drug delivery into and through human nail.

Drug treatment of diseases of the human nail remains a difficult challenge; topical therapy, in particular, is limited by very poor transport of active agents across the nail itself. The objective of this research was to examine the potential of controlled, and fibre-optic delivered, femtosecond laser light pulses to provide new pathways and opportunities for drug access to targets within and beneath the nail plate. Optical, confocal fluorescence and scanning electron microscopies demonstrated partial and complete laser poration of human nail samples, with the energy per pore and the exposure duration being the key modulating parameters that determined the extent of ablation achieved.