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Cover design: eStudioCalamar, Figueres/BerlinPrinted on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) I would also like to make a dedication to my mother Mrs. Zohreh Khajavi-Noori, my father Dr. Ali Nouri, my sister Dr. Mahnaz Nouri, my uncle Dr. Farrokh Khajavi, my Grandparents and the rest of my dear family. I love you all.vii A refreshing trait of this book about lasers in dermatology is that it is the first in years, to place this topic within the broader perspective of other medical specialties. Almost immediately after the first laser was created in 1960, a handful of visionary physicians recognized that this extremely powerful source of light might have surgical applications. Those pioneers practiced in three organ systems openly accessible for light exposure -ophthalmology, dermatology, laryngology. These are still the specialties that rely heavily on surgical lasers (with the addition of urology, thanks to laser lithotripsy and prostatectomy). By far, dermatologists have a greater variety of therapeutic lasers than any other medical group, while lagging behind in other aspects of laser medicine.How did we get such a wide, almost dazzling, variety of treatment lasers in dermatology? (Because, we need them for different uses in various practice settings; lasers are the most tissue-specific surgical tools in existence.) Do we really need so many? (Well, we need most all of them. Only a few are interchangeable.) Are the mechanistic, clinical, safety, ethical and practice-related chapters of this book worthy of study? (Yes.) Can't we just learn which buttons to push, in courses provided by the more reputable device manufacturers just after a laser is purchased? (This approach is foolish beyond words, yet such fools exist. You may encounter them, and some of the patients they have harmed. Even more foolish are those who purchase a used laser and start using it without any training whatsoever.)Another asset of this text is its practicality, whether you use lasers or not. If you get hooked on laser dermatology please talk to your colleagues, and attend bona fide laser medical conferences that include your particular clinical interests, in which you are free to ask questions of faculty who are not trying to sell something. Pay close attention to the quality and source of clinical evidence regarding safety and efficacy of a particular laser device. There is no substitute for hands-on training, which cannot be obtained i...