For three decades lasers have been used in human medicine to perform surgical procedures that were previously either impossible or too dangerous by conventional techniques.  The way tissues react to a high energy beam produced by a CO2 laser is a miracle of modern medicine and in the last 15 years surgical lasers have been introduced to the Veterinary community.
On a daily basis we have been asked about the advantages of doing surgeries by laser instead of scalpel blades and the answer is:  Less Pain, Less Swelling and Less Bleeding.  As a laser beam cuts through tissues it seals blood vessels resulting in minimal bleeding, it seals lymphatic vessels minimizing postoperative swelling, and it seals nerve ending reducing post surgical pain.  The fact that only the laser beam (not an instrument) touches the tissues eliminates much of the trauma that occurs using standard surgical techniques.
Some clients ask whether the high heat of the laser beam is damaging rather than healing and we answer that with proper surgical techniques the amount of thermal damage is minimal and that the heat actually kills bad bacteria resulting in less infection and therefore rapid healing.
Precision is another important factor of using a laser.  Surgeons can remove unhealthy or unwanted tissue without injuring healthy tissues, which is very important when there is not very much tissue to spare (ie: eyelids, distal limbs). 
Today we use a laser in about 80% of the surgeries our hospital performs.  For some procedures it is so much more humane to use a laser that we will not perform them any other way (ie:  Tumors, eyelid surgeries, wart removals, etc).  In addition many internal surgeries are vastly superior when done with a laser.