by Dr. Suzanne Bruce, from the Spring 2008 issue
Signature Fraxel is a skin rejuvenation treatment, which combines our Fraxel re:store™ laser resurfacing procedure with light-emitting diode or LED therapy called GentleWaves® and Omnilux™. Combining these two forms of LED treatment reduces the downtime associated with Fraxel and enhances the improvement seen when treating facial wrinkles and acne scars.
Our Fraxel re:store™ laser treatment is a breakthrough approach to resurfacing the skin. The laser produces thousands of tiny, but deep, columns of treatment in your skin. During a full-face procedure, approximately 20 percent of the skin surface is affected by the laser, leaving the surrounding 80 percent of the skin unaffected and intact. This “fractional” treatment allows the skin to heal much faster than if the entire area were treated at once, using the body’s natural healing process to create new, healthy, tighter tissue to replace skin imperfections. With Fraxel, you will see improvement in skin texture, acne scars, wrinkles and discolorations, such as sunspots and melasma (blotchy skin). Even delicate areas, such as the neck, chest and hands, can benefit from this procedure. Although downtime is less than with a traditional skin resurfacing, you can experience redness and swelling after treatment. This can last from three to seven days, depending on how aggressive we are with the energy settings. We created the Signature Fraxel to reduce the severity of the redness and swelling, which in turn reduces the downtime for our patients.
When LED light therapy is administered prior to and following a Fraxel treatment, the duration of redness and swelling is typically reduced by two to three days. Furthermore, some patients experience an acne flare-up in the first week or two after laser resurfacing. Using LED light treatments post-Fraxel can help to prevent and treat these acne outbreaks.
There is another benefit to adding these LED light treatments to our traditional Fraxel. Both GentleWaves and Omnilux light therapies have been shown to improve the appearance of fine wrinkles, pores and skin texture by stimulating collagen production. Although it’s difficult to quantify, we believe that using LED light along with Fraxel enhances the results of the laser resurfacing on wrinkles and skin texture.
We can explain exactly how we combine lasers and LEDs to improve your Fraxel treatment during your Fraxel consultation. If you are interested, please set up an appointment with one of our dermatologists or our physician assistant by calling 713.850.0240 or sending an e-mail to Signature Fraxel.
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