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  • Who is a Good Candidate for the Anti Aging Fraxel Laser?
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The best candidates for Fraxel are someone who have fair skin, who have a lot of sun damage, fine lines, wrinkles, acne scars, pupil wrinkles, or just overall resurfacing of the skin. It’s an overall anti-aging laser. I’ve had young patients come in who’ve just had a lot of sun damage and they have spectacular results. So, it really appeals to, not just someone who’s quite old and sun-damaged, it really treats the whole [inaudible 00:00:30] of patients. It really has to do with someone who’s in the sun and how wrinkled or sun-damaged they were.

Fraxel Laser utilizes what’s called fractionated technology, meaning it only treats a fraction of the skin at a given time. Unlike old-fashioned CO2 lasers which would essentially wipe out your entire skin and leave you red for six to eight weeks after the procedure, the Fraxel leaves you sort of pink, almost like a sunburn for one or two days. And then, the skin will peel over the next three or four days leaving you refreshed, beautiful, all the pigmentation, basically peels off within a week, and you have new, younger, healthy-looking skin.

Fraxel’s and amazing laser because you can do one Fraxel and it will wipe out all the sun damage that you’ve had for a year. I know it’s a great laser because it’s the only laser that I’ve done on my female patients where their husbands have come in few weeks or months later to say they want to do the same procedure. And I’ve thought about this a lot, and I felt why does it appeal to the husband. And, it’s because it’s a very, very easy procedure. It’s only one time and it doesn’t hurt. It has really replaced traditional peel. I use to do maybe six to eight peels on a patient, and still not get the result that I could get from one Fraxel.

So, you come to the office an hour before the schedule of the appointment. So, if your appointment is at 3:00, you come at 2:00 because you want a full hour of numbing, and you take the numbing medicine off in the exam room; and then, we put little goggles, little eye shield to protect your eyes. And then, we do the face in sections. We go over each area of the face, the forehead, the cheeks, the chin, the nose, the upper lip; each section eight passes at a time. The procedure takes about 10, 15 minutes. The Fraxel Laser actually comes adapted with a zimmer. A zimmer is a cooling mechanism which blows cold air on your skin simultaneously. So, while I’m treating you with the Fraxel Laser, the zimmer is blowing cold air so that it’s cooling your skin during the treatment so that you don’t feel the heat of the laser at all.

We, then, leave you with some cold compresses for a few minutes. We instruct you to go home and put cold compresses on for an hour or two and then, just stay out of the sun. And, I give every patient a prescription moisturizer for a week afterwards. Within five to seven days, your skin is remarkable; it’s younger looking, it’s fresh, all the sun damage, the pigmentation’s gone. It’s pretty remarkable laser. I mean, the results have been spectacular. I would say I wish I invented this laser. I really did because it’s that amazing.

Who is a Good Candidate for the Anti Aging Fraxel Laser?

Dr. Michele Green discusses who is an ideal candidate for Fraxel, and how this painless laser procedure helps to remove sun damage and make you look younger.