sweetcathie

Rough Skin and Lumps After Fraxel SR1500 - Mexico City, Mexico

Hi! I have had this procedures three times now, one year apart each from the other. The "weird" texture only last few weeks after treatment for me. The laser that is used on me is the Fraxel Restore SR1500 which is not the strongest one. I am so happy with the results. My skin has improved a lot over this 3 years. I have been using Obagi products all this time too (with tretinoin in one of the creams). If the procedure is done by professionals with the right settings I think it has to produce good results.

Now after 8 weeks of my first Fraxel, my skin looks and feels great. It has definitely improved its condition. I have no doubts that some people is having very bad reactions to this procedure, due to bad choice of settings of the equipment or handling before and after the procedure by the people providing the service or both things. But it could also be due to particular genetic characteristics of the patient that make their skin vulnerable to such a disaster result. In which case there is an URGENT need to open a research line to study each of those cases that went wrong. This is clearly responsability of the companies that make this equipments and I guess also the FDA is responsible for authorizing this procedures knowing that there is a certain percentage of patients with very bad results that endanger severely their health. Physicians and practitioners should develop a kind of "test" with the settings they intend to use on the patient on a small hidden area of skin to have a look of what the outcome will be. I know it sounds like a lot of work, time, effort and even money, but because of the multiple bad experiences,it is something that may worth to try. I am very happy with my results, I consider myself very lucky for having reacted the way I was expected to. But I am aware that things could have been so different and I would have prefered to be sure of the outcome before doing the whole procedure on my entire face. I think people affected by this procedure needs to gather their voices and proceed legally agains the companies that lauched this equipment, asking not only for a compensation of dammages but also for further studies of their cases to find out exactly what went wrong in order to find a way to prevent it in the near future.

At 6 weeks after treatment my skin has gone back to a normal texture. The microdots or minilumps that I was worried about have gone and I am so happy. It really helped a lot to start using the tretinoin every night, I also added a bit of fluosinolone (spelling?) to the mix as I found that is recomended to decrease the slight inflamation produced by the hidroxiquinone and the tretinoin. My skin is very soft and smooth now. I will keep on the Obagi system to complete the 12 weeks or a bit more if there is still some product left. With my results so far I don´t see why I shouldn´t do a second Fraxel treatment, although it is going to be a year after the first one for sure, no earlier than that. I want to remark that I had my procedure done by a very professional dermatologist not in a beauty spa. My settings for Fraxel seemed to be the right ones, not too agressive, not to mild (check them in my original message), I will ask for the same settings next time.

As an update, I have started to add tretinoin 0.1% to the Obagi blender cream every night and in just one week there has been an improvement in the texture of the skin. There are still the tiny lumps specially around eyes, but they have some how shrinked. The rest of the face feels better. It could be due to the light inflammation produced by the tretinoin itself as there is also an increase in the pink color, so the skin is reacting to it. Hopefully this will help to smooth the skin permanently and make the lumps (micro-dots, same size as the micro-lessions produced by the laser) to vanish with more time to heal. I will keep posting to let know about progress.