Laser Skin Resurfacing and Rejuvenation

How Laser Skin Resurfacing Works

I've been using lasers since my residency at Harvard Medical School in 1981.

Lasers are tools that cause a controlled heat injury. This injury starts a cascade of healing events in your skin that shrink the skin and generate more collagen. Less skin means less wrinkles... and more collagen means thicker, healthier skin.

Early wrinkle removing lasers caused a wound that took weeks to heal. Their results were profound but the recovery was miserable. But those early lasers removed the entire surface of the skin (epidermis and some dermis) and pain was significant. The newer lasers drill microscopic holes in the skin and leave some of the skin intact between the holes. This allows for faster, nearly painless healing without creating a wound. Wrinkles are still reduced, splotches are improved, but the entire experience is more palatable.

Which Laser I Use

There are different types of lasers. While I have both the CO2 (carbon dioxide) and Erbium lasers, I think the CO2 does a better job. I can vary its strength and the density of the laser beams. While I do this, I protect your eyes with contact lenses and your teeth with a guard. A typical fractionated laser takes a little over an hour to perform. I will often numb your face with lidocaine cream and give you a Journavx pain reliever pill prior to the procedure. Sometimes I even inject lidocaine for a more profound numbing.

One of the nice things about the laser is that I can vary the depth of the peel. For areas without significant sun damage, I go more superficially. For more wrinkled areas, I go deeper.  I can specifically remove some skin growths with the laser.

What Laser Resurfacing Accomplishes

Lasers can reduce wrinkles, even out pigmentation, and generally rejuvenate your skin. The lighter I go with the laser, the less downtime there is, but the less result there is. For my twenty and thirty something patients, I generally laser very superficially, giving an exfoliation and a mild tightening of the face. Once you hit your forties, however, I crank up the laser and more aggressively go after those early wrinkles. By the time you are 60, we'll need to be very aggressive with the laser.

One of the coolest uses of this laser is hand rejuvenation. In just a minute or two, my laser will reduce the splotchy, rough skin on the backs of your hands. Give it a try!

From this discussion, you can see that optimal results with the laser require an artistic approach to the procedure. During your recovery, I'll ask you to send me daily photos so that I can monitor your progress carefully and possibly prescribe steroid or antibiotic creams.

I perform laser skin resurfacing at my Park Avenue office in Manhattan only.