How Much Down Time is Needed After Erbium Treatment?

Depending on how aggressive the treatment, usually 5-7 days is enough time to heal. Thank you for your question and good luck.

  Flat beam Erbium laser resurfacing which treats all of the skin, can require up to two weeks of downtime if a medium or deep Erbium laser peel is done. Newer Fractional Ablative Laser skin resurfacing leaves tiny islands of skin intact and results in quicker healing with only 5-7 days of downtime. Non-ablative fractional Erbium laser resurfacing does not break the skin and only causes pink or red color which can be covered with make up and only lasts a few days. Read link below for... more

The amount of downtime after an Erbium laser treatment depends on which Erbium laser is used and the laser parameters chosen by your physician. The downtime can vary anywhere from absolutely no downtime when an Erbium micropeel is used to between 7 and10 days from social activities and work with a more aggressive approach. To your health,Dr. Goldberg

It depends, even when you mention medium as a depth. My erbium laser is by Scition (www.sciton.com for more information that might help), and allows three different ways to apply erbium energy. A micropeel means you treat all the skin about 20-60 microns deep. Takes 2-5 days for the skin to heal, redness then disperses usually within another week. Erbium can also be fractionated, called profractional xc. That treats 11% or more of the skin with vertical microchannels that are deeper... more

The erbium laser is a great way to perform superficial to deep peels.  Superficial peels can heel in two to three days. Most medium depth peels take about a week to heal. 

The erbium laser is fully ablative and the downtime is similar to that of an ablative CO2 laser, aggressive chemical peel (35% TCA or phenol peel), and dermabrasion. The entire surface of the skin is removed to a variable debth (50 microns for a "mini-peel or 300 microns for an aggressive treatment). The skin will generally regenerate (re-epithelialize) in about 10 days making this the earliest time you could get back into cover-up make-up. We recommend a mineral make-up such as GLO... more