First of all your acne should be under control before embarking on laser treatments for acne scarring or you may:
- Have acne breakouts from the treatment and post treatmnet wound care.
- Continue to have scarring acne and need further treatments down the road with additional costs.
Secondly, the generic term Fraxel can be very misleading as there are 3 new "Fraxels" out there, none of which are created equal.
- The original Fraxel is nonablative
- The next generation are re:store re:fine and re:pair, the last of which is abalative and as for the "Fraxel" family is clearly their best laser at treating acne scars.
- The other great laser for treating acne scars in the Sciton Profractional laser. It is an erbium yag laser (not CO2), heals quicker and is less painful than the Fraxel re:pair CO2.
So, the technology is out there to treat scars quickly and safely with minimal downtime. The only downside is the high likelihood of the need for more than one treatment with some of these devices, especially the non-ablative Fraxels.
Lastly, there is the gold standard full ablation lasers by Coherent CO2 or Sciton Erb Yag that will get great results in one treatment, but require wound care for 10-14 days. These results are far better than any of the other treatments discussed... when it comes to lasers, remember there is no "free lunch," i.e. more downtime = better results but higher chance of complications versus little to no downtime = need for multiple treatments and lower risk of complications.
Ask your doctor what he or she thinks is best....and be weary that although the rolled scars may do great with lasers, the "ice pick" type scars do not do very well with any of these lasers; they often need small punch excisions with or without a stitch to fully improve their appearance. This can be done at the end of your laser treatment series.
Good luck and be sure if acne is still active to get the acne under control with medications, etc. before starting any of these treatments!
