Plasma Medicine

Book Preface

Plasma medicine has inspired the last decade of the authors’ professional activities at Drexel Plasma Institute of the Drexel University. Plasma medicine is a very exciting and new multidisciplinary branch of modern science and technology. Even the term ‘plasma medicine’ has only been in existence since the start of the 21st century. Plasma medicine embraces physics required to develop novel plasma discharges relevant for medical applications, medicine to apply the technology not only in vitro but also in vivo testing and, last but not least, biology to understand the complicated biochemical processes involved in plasma interaction with living tissues.

While an understanding of the mechanisms by which non-thermal plasma interacts with living systems has begun to emerge only recently, a significant number of journal publications and even reviews focused on plasma medicine have appeared during the last 5–10 years. Several prestigious journals have published special issues dedicated to the topic, the new Plasma Medicine journal has been recently inaugurated, multiple world symposiums have created special sessions in this new field and plasma medical workshops have been organized in the USA, Germany, France, Korea, Japan, China and other countries. Four successful International Conferences on Plasma Medicine (ICPM) took place during the last 7 years in the USA, Germany and France; the 5th ICPM is planned to be held in Japan. Finally, the International Society on Plasma Medicine has been organized to coordinate the efforts of physicist, chemists, biologists, engineers, medical doctors and representatives of the industry working in this new field.

Despite the tremendous interest in plasma medicine, no single monograph has published in this field. There is no book where recent developments in plasma medicine, both technological and scientific, are described in a fashion accessible to the highly interdisciplinary audience of doctors, physicists, biologists, chemists and other scientists, university students and professors, engineers and medical practitioners. This is exactly the goal of the present Plasma Medicine book. The book is written for numerous scientists and medical practitioners, students, professors and industrial professionals who are involved today in plasma medicine.

When writing the book, we kept in mind the multidisciplinary nature of the field of plasma medicine. Physicists, chemists and engineers should be able to learn the different terminology of their biologist and medical practitioner partners, and vice versa. The book is beneficial to sides and should promote more effective development of the field of plasma medicine. The subject of plasma medicine has recently been included in the academic curriculum of universities, and we hope that the book will be helpful in this regard to students (as well as professors) involved in plasma medical education.