The pros and cons of laser skin resurfacing
Laser resurfacing can be tricky because the more aggressive you want to be, the more potential there is for side effects like permanent lightening of the skin (hypopigmentation), darkening of the skin (hyperpigmentation), scarring, or a lot of downtime.
If I told you that we were going to improve some of those lines and that infection and other side effects could happen, you won’t be able to go outside for a couple weeks, and you won’t be able to socialize for a couple weeks, is that something you’re interested in doing?
Originally it was the CO2 laser that was used, now they’re doing some other things that are not quite as dramatic, called Fraxel. They’re not going as deep as the CO2 laser and typically are not as effective as a CO2 laser. So they’ll take you so far, but not as far as a CO2 resurfacing might be. They’re sort of playing on the same theme that people want some results, there are varying degrees of results, there are varying degrees of aggressiveness, and then what do you want as far as downtime?
People want great results and minimum downtime. And we’re trying to balance that, but you get what you pay for as they say, and that’s always a balance of what I’m trying to figure out with a patient.
Initially, I used a lot of the agressive resurfacing lasers, but the downtime was just too much for people. Now I find that we’re doing more lower-dosage lasers. Low-dosage lasers offer some improvement for some of the finer lines.
So its really that combination approach. We’re not going too deep, there’s less chance of infection and side effects, and it’s good for some of those mild to moderate wrinkles, but it’s not going to touch the deeper wrinkles, like some of the more aggressive techniques would be.
