Are you put to sleep whilst having laser hair removal?

Effective numbing creams help lessen the pain considerably as does cooling the skin during the treatment and many lasers have cooling tips, either water flow or cryogen spray. General anesthesia and sedation with intravenous anesthesia is not necessary for laser hair removal.
 

We never put patients to sleep for Laser Hair removal. We can either use topical numbing creams or now we offer laughing gas to keep our patients more comfortable.

Laser hair removal is one of the least painful cosmetic procedures. If you need something, apply topical 1 hour before and again 30 minutes prior to procedure. Check with your doctor regarding components of any topical anesthetic as some can have serious side effects if applied over a large area.

Many people tolerate the procedure just fine without any anesthesia, but of course pain threshold can vary from person to person.  If necessary, a topical anesthetic can be applied 30 minutes to one hour prior to the procedure, but caution must be used when treating a large body surface area as too much absorption can be dangerous.  Most  lasers used for hair removal have a built-in cooling device which also helps to make the treatment more comfortable.

The only anesthesia that is used for laser hair removal is topical cream, not general anesthesia.

The topical medications need to be used with great caution.  If they are applied over a large surface area or under occlusion, such as covering with plastic wrap, enough of the medicine can be absorbed to be dangerous.

Make sure if you are applying an anesthetic cream, your laser physician lets you know the size of the area to be treated and the amount of medicine to be applied for numbing. 

Many of my patients tolerate laser hair removal without any anesthesia at all.

Some patients may feel a slight discomfort with the laser pulse, sometimes described as the snapping of a rubber band on the skin.  The degree of discomfort varies with each person, depending on your pain threshold.  A topical anesthetic may also be requested based on individual preferences or tolerances as well as particular anatomic sites. This should be applied 30 minutes to 1 hour prior to treatment. In our office, we use the GentleMAX laser by Candela where discomfort is also minimized by Candela’s Dynamic Cooling Device (DCD) technology where cryogen is sprayed onto the skin a fraction of a second before each laser pulse.

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