Hardy LA, et al. - Researchers examined the utility of experimental Thulium fiber laser (TFL) as an alternative to the gold standard Holmium:YAG laser for lithotripsy. Direct comparison of Holmium and TFL for ‘dusting’ was made using three laser groups, G1: 0.2 J/50 Hz/10 W; G2: 0.2 J/80 Hz/16 W; and G3: 0.4 J/80 Hz/32 W. As both laser systems had technical limitations, Holmium laser pulse durations ranged from 200 to 350 μs, while TFL pulse durations ranged from 500 to 1,000 μs. With continuous laser operation time limited to ≤5 minutes, they used an experimental setup consisting of 1 × 1 cm cuvette with 1 mm sieve. For each group, they used calcium oxalate monohydrate stone samples with a sample size of n = 5, with average initial stone mass ranging from 216 to 297 mg among groups. At all three settings, lower ablation rates were noted with Holmium laser vs TFL (G1: 0.3 ± 0.2 vs 0.8 ± 0.2; G2: 0.6 ± 0.1 vs 1.0 ± 0.4; G3: 0.7 ± 0.2 vs 1.3 ± 0.9 mg/s). Findings suggest that for lithotripsy, TFL is a promising alternative to the Holmium laser when operated in dusting mode and resulted in higher stone ablation rates and smaller stone fragments.