Some of the patients that come into my office are afraid of lasers because there is a lot of confusing information out there. My goal with this video is to help clear up some of the confusion and help you better understand a little more about laser skin treatments.
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Let’s talk about deep laser resurfacing. What makes lasers so great is that there are many different types of lasers that can treat different depths of skin, with different dramatic results. For example, I really like the Erbium laser because unlike some lasers (such as CO2 lasers), it allows me to control how deeply I treat the skin. I typically use this laser for deeper laser resurfacing, and it can provide truly transformative results. Being able to control the laser depth is really important because it lets me tailor the treatment to each patient’s needs, including what their recovery downtime needs to be.
Recovery after deep laser resurfacing can leave your skin red for about 2 or 3 weeks, sometimes up to 1 month. The first week of recovery is pretty intense as you can have some sloughing of the excess skin, you’re covered with lotion, etc. But after that, once your skin starts to regrow, the recovery goes pretty quickly!
One of the most important things I do when patients come in to see me is keep the conversation focused on the patient and their needs before anything else. Some patients ask all these questions about lasers, like, “What’s ablative? What’s non-ablative?” These questions aren’t the best place to start discussing treatment because if you lead with the different types of lasers, the amount of information can be overwhelming! So I’ll simplify the conversation and ask the patient questions like, “What do you do for a living? What’s your day-to-day like? How often are you in the sun? How much downtime are we looking at after your treatment?” Once we go over these things, we’ve already narrowed down the treatment options, and then we can move into discussing what kind of laser is right for the patient.