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Acne can be devastating at any age, but far worse than the condition itself is the scarring left behind. While the pimples and infections will eventually go away and can be treated, many teens are left with the reminders on their faces in the form of unpleasant scars. Fortunately, they don't have to live with them forever.
With laser skin treatment, acne scars are treatable. This process is also referred to as laser skin resurfacing and it can make all the difference in a person suffering from acne or another skin issue.
How It Works
The advancements in laser technology have made it possible to use this treatment to resurface the skin and not only remove acne scars, but also to treat the active cases. After a laser skin treatment, acne is greatly reduced and may even be eliminated after several procedures.
When the laser is focused on areas of the skin, it burns away the top layer and penetrates the skin to stimulate cell growth. This has the effect of producing an entirely new layer of skin, fresh and unscathed. Since this is a rather delicate procedure, it's important that only a trained professional perform it.
What to Expect
This technique works very well on fair skinned people, but requires a little more finesse on those with darker skin, since the laser could cause loss of pigmentation or color. It can be used on a variety of scars caused by pimples and infections. These might include irregular skin, pitting or even raised areas of scar tissue, depending on how the infection was treated.
Before treatment, you'll be briefed on what is going to happen. Your eyes will need to be protected, so the spa professional will cover them. This just ensures that there will be no accidental exposure, though the laser will not be used near your eyes.
The procedure can be slightly painful, so often a topical anesthetic is applied to help with that. Any discomfort after the treatment can be relieved with Tylenol. Depending on the type of laser used, you may have some recovery time and require multiple sessions. The least invasive laser treatment, Fraxel, is virtually painless, non-invasive and requires several treatments in order to achieve good results. For this reason, some people prefer the stronger CO2 laser.
Resurfacing the entire face can take up to 2 hours, but most people only need a partial treatment for specific areas which takes far less time. If you opt for the strongest and most invasive treatments, you could end up with a few weeks of recovery ahead of you. However, at the end of it, you'll have smooth, much improved skin.
Not Just For Acne
While laser treatment is a great way to help acne and remove the scars, there are plenty of other uses. It's been a common way to get rid of fine wrinkles and liver spots in celebrities for several years and now the public has access to this, as well. As an anti-aging treatment, lasers are quite successful. They can also be used to reduce or even remove (with multiple treatments) hair in areas where it is unwanted.
Laser skin treatments can be found at spas that offer more technologically advanced techniques. It's a procedure that should only be done by professionals who have the experience with the equipment, since misuse could cause problems like burns and loss of pigmentation. A properly equipped spa will be able to treat acne and other skin problems without issue, though.
As this acne treatment becomes more common, you'll find that more and more spas offer this option. The popularity also brings the price down, making this a procedure that nearly anyone can afford.
Laser acne treatment is rapidly gaining popularity among acne patients with scars that are the result of severe acne. In the initial stages of this method of acne treatment, the affected skin's surface was sculpted or vaporized by means of ablative lasers. However, over the years the use of ablative lasers has been reduced for laser acne treatment because of the long downtime of the ablatives and some possible complications. New laser acne treatment techniques like Fraxel are centered on promoting the growth of collagen (connective tissue) beneath acne scars. These techniques cast no damage to the skin surface and hence are increasingly becoming popular. Three more important techniques of these are: Smoothbeam laser, Vbeam Laser, and Fraxel laser.
Smoothbeam Laser In case of the Smoothbeam laser treatment, first a topical local anesthetic agent is applied to the affected area. A second before employing the laser pulse, a cooling cryogen spray is released on the skin. This makes the treatment fairly comfortable. After the treatment of scars with Smoothbeam laser, very little redness remains on the skin and that too disappears in a few hours time. Vbeam Laser
The Vbeam Laser along with Starlux, Ellipse and Medilux Intense Pulsed Light Systems (IPLs) are all very useful laser acne treatment techniques, especially for treating red acne scars. The target of these specialized systems is the blood vessels in the acne scars. With their sharp and focused energetic beams, they make the scars less prominent. These lasers work for a range of acne scars: flat, raised, and depressed. Laser acne treatment with the Vbeam and IPLs are not painful and do not require a long downtime after the procedure is over.
Fraxel Laser
Fraxel Laser literally remains the revolutionary technique in the laser acne treatment of acne scars and is now the world's first non-ablative resurfacing laser (done without CO2 laser). The procedure of Fraxel Laser Treatment is forming numerous tiny, deep columns of treatment in the skin. These columns are termed micro-thermal zones. This method focuses on terminating old pigmented cells of the top skin (epidermis). The columns also penetrate deeper into the dermis layer of the skin and remove imperfections like acne scars. Precision of the Fraxel laser can be indicated by the fact that it penetrates the dead, protective layer of the skin (the stratum corneum) without causing it any harm. Also, Fraxel Laser Treatment does not injure or affect the surrounding tissues but precisely targets the scars.