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Can low-temperature plasma technology play a role in medicine? This is a question that many investigators today are trying hard to give a positive answer to. It did not quite start out this way. Almost two decades ago, few "curious" electrical engineers and physicists with the help of few "brave" biologists! microbiologists asked themselves more basic questions: What happens to biological cells if they were exposed to low-temperature plasma? Will they die? Will they survive? If they survive, will they come out the same or somehow "injured"? If injured, will they be able to repair the damage and recover? What kind of damage? Which plasma agent causes the damage? etc. As will be shown in this paper, some of these fundamental questions have been partially or fully answered, but until today, a complete picture has yet to emerge. This is good and not so good. It is good because if we already knew all the answers, we would not be looking forward to a more exciting research. It is not so good because after all these years, we are still quite a ways from an implementable medical application. In this review paper, the present state of knowledge regarding the effects of cold plasma on bacteria cells (prokaryotes) and on eukaryotic cells (such as mammalian cells) will be presented. As medical applications where low-temperature plasma is showing signs of success, blood coagulation and wound healing will be described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper was to assess the effectiveness, safety, stability, and mechanism of tooth whitening using a direct current cold atmospheric pressure air plasma microjet (PMJ) with the assistance of whitening gels (blank or containing 3% H2O2). The results were compared with those obtained from teeth treated with blank gel only and with gel containing 35% H2O2 in a cold light bleaching system. Tooth whitening effectiveness right after various treatments as well as 18 months after treatment was evaluated via CIELAB colorimetry. Type K thermocouple, scanning electron microscope and energy dispersive spectroscopy were employed to study the temperature of pulp chamber, tooth surface morphology, and elemental composition of enamel surface, respectively. Teeth in the plasma groups were effectively whitened in 5 min, though no significant difference was observed between the two plasma groups. Pulp chamber temperature was shown to remain below 35 °C. Morphological and surface elemental analysis showed similar changes to tooth enamel in the plasma groups and in the cold light group. These observations suggested that PMJ with blank gel was more effective for tooth whitening with acceptable safety and good stability. Optical emission spectroscopy results revealed that reactive oxygen species, such as O, •OH, and NO, in plasma may play a dominant role in the process of plasma tooth whitening. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an essay narrating the recent history of the introduction of the biomedical applications of nonthermal plasmas to the plasma science research community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]