These days, there's "buzz" about laser resurfacing. Jennifer Aniston openly touts her addiction to "laser porn" - she resurfaces regularly maintaining her ageless looks.
Resurfacing is quite simple. It uses a laser to remove some of the surface of the skin, stimulating the body to grow new skin which has never been sunburned or stressed. Many skin problems reside in the surface layers - bumps and texture, fine lines, age spots, wrinkles and laxity. If you remove layers deep enough, when the skin heals: voila! those problems are gone.
Many patients who come to us have been to offices already and told they can have a "light-medium laser peel" or a "medium laser peel" - offices use their own names, but are essentially the same: very light laser peels that they can perform with more limited staff and equipment.
In our office, Dr. Gelber personally performs every laser resurfacing, which can be light if you have little or no downtime, but where we have the equipment and skill to go as deep as is needed to improve deep wrinkles, scars (especially acne scars) and significant laxity. See our before and after gallery to see the results you can accomplish the lasting changes you can experience with 7-14 days out of the public eye.
Where it becomes art is in blending treatments: using light peels over IPL or BBL, SkinTyte and ClearSilk to improve both color and texture in those with only a few days available for downtime, seamlessly transitioning lighter and deeper treatments in different areas of the face, even carefully planing down individual lines under high-magnification glasses for best effect. Practitioners who have and are comfortable with both full-field and fractional resurfacing can employ both of these in a single treatment as well.
In addition, the wavelength used to remove damaged cells is important as well. There are only three wavelengths which ablate tissue. YSSG is almost never used. CO2 was the original ablative laser. It's an inexpensive laser for an office to buy and works, but the patient pays the price. Full CO2 resurfacing gives the skin that characteristic white, waxy look. CO2 can't be used off the face in fully ablative mode, leaving a distinctive line at the jawline, and both the procedure and recovery are more painful and difficult. CO2 resurfacing can leave patients deeply red for a year or longer as they heal.
There are a lot of CO2 lasers out there - they are far less expensive than erbium, so they are still quite popular in offices. Although harder to find, erbium resurfacing lasers (of which Sciton makes the only powerful one) allow a full range of treatments from light to very deep. It is less painful - permitting even deep, full resurfacing to be performed in the office with oral medication and blocks, unlike CO2 which requires general anesthesia with all its risks.
Anyway, that's a lot of talking, here are some pictures which show what you can accomplish with a deep (10 days out of the public eye) laser resurfacing treatment:
Call us to schedule a consult and plan that gets you the results you are looking for. (775) 298-1750 or email
office@tahoeaestheticmedicine.com today!
