Pre-Treatment
Skin recovery times and discolorations can be avoided following Erbium Laser treatment at The Brandow Clinic in both the Philadelphia or New Jersey locations by pre-treating your skin for 4 to 6 weeks before the procedure. This is done with an exfoliating agent such as Tretinoin (Retin-A) or Vitamin C and a bleaching agent such as Obagi Blender or Obagi Clear containing Hydroquinone 4%. Our Nurse will recommend a personal plan for skin type.
A Typical Treatment
New Jersey and Philadelphia board certified cosmetic surgeon Dr. Brandow recommends use of an anesthetic ointment 45-60 minutes before your appointment (which can be purchased here). The anesthetic is washed off before treatment. Treatment is well tolerated and feels like a prickling sensation. A treatment session typically will take approximately 20-25 minutes.
What Happens After Erbium Laser Treatment?
You will experience a mild sunburn sensation for about an hour and then virtually no discomfort. The skin will have a pinkish tone and peel for five to seven days. This is a normal sign that the skin is healing deeply, that dermal tissue is being repaired, and there is good blood circulation. Swelling is minimal and generally resolves in two to three days.
Number of Treatments Needed
Clinical studies suggest that 3 treatments spaced about 3 weeks apart produce a gradual remodeling of dermal matrix components, until complete healing occurs and “good” material that contains collagen and elastin replaces old epidermal and dermal tissue. Over a period of 1-3 months, clinical improvement in photo-aged skin correlates with dermal repair and positive skin changes.
Patient Benefits
Erbium laser treatment offers the benefits of speedy healing and minimal to no downtime. Side effects are minimal and typically involve swelling and redness. Mild swelling should subside within 2 to 3 days, and redness usually fades over several days. Patients can apply make-up 4-6 days after treatment and return to routine activities.
The latest in noninvasive laser skin rejuvenation-fractional rejuvenation-targets small areas of skin where damage has occurred, leaving the surrounding healthy tissue untouched.
Think of your skin as a photograph in need of restoration or touch up.
Just as a damaged painting is delicately restored one small area at a time, or a photographic image is altered, pixel by pixel, Erbium Laser Treatment, a fractional laser rejuvenation, improves your appearance by affecting only a fraction of your skin at a time with thousands of tiny microscopic laser spots.
Turn Back the Clock on Aging
After your very first Erbium Laser Treatment, you will begin to feel the difference in your skin, as it gradually becomes softer, smoother and fresher. Fine lines around your eyes will noticeably fade. So will uneven coloring and the brown spots caused by aging and sun exposure.
After several treatments, your friends and family will marvel at how youthful and healthy your skin looks. The results are so discreet and natural that only you and Dr. Brandow will know you’ve had a laser surgical procedure.
For years, patients have desired a breakthrough aesthetic approach with many of the benefits of ablative laser skin resurfacing (performed with a CO2 laser), but without the downtime, side effects and lengthy recovery period. The solution: Erbium Laser Treatment.
Erbium Laser Treatment produces thousands of tiny but deep columns of treatment in your skin, known as MicroThermal Zones. This treatment eliminates old epidermal pigmented cells. It also penetrates deeply into the dermis. Just as important, though, are the areas of skin the Erbium laser leaves untouched. The Erbium laser is so precise that it penetrates the non-living, protective barrier of the skin, called the stratum corneum, as if it were a window and leaves it completely intact. For every microthermal zone the laser targets and treats intensively, it leaves the surrounding tissue 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 tissue to replace skin imperfections.
New Solution
Up until now, there have been two primary categories of laser skin treatment: ablative laser resurfacing and nonablative laser or light-based therapy, each with their pros and cons. Ablative techniques regenerate aging and sun-damaged skin with superior cosmetic results, but are associated with significant side effects, risks and prolonged healing and recovery times. Nonablative techniques, on the other hand, generally carry fewer risks but require numerous treatments over several months, producing only limited clinical results of cosmetic improvement.
This novel fractional approach to laser skin treatment represents a new science and category of cosmetic skin surgery that offers patients the positive results of ablative resurfacing with the low-impact benefits of non-ablative therapies. Unlike old ablative lasers that remove the top layer of skin, the procedure produces tiny, microscopic sites of thermal impact separated by areas of unaffected, healthy tissue. The spared healthy tissue between treatment zones contains viable cells that promote rapid healing of the outer skin layers. At the same time, each MicroThermal Zone (MTZ) penetrates between 400-700 microns into the dermis to remodel collagen. Thus, achieves the skin improvements obtained with conventional CO2 laser resurfacing, but without the associated side effects or downtime.
How Erbium Laser Treatment Works
The innovative Erbium Laser is specially designed to alter only fractional volumes of the target tissue. Similar to precise alteration of photographs and paintings, the clinical effect of this treatment technique is to alter the appearance of aging and sun-damaged skin. The creation of tiny microscopic wounds results in a wound healing process and a response to the coagulation of collagen fibers.
