By Dr. Mark Ballentyne
Remarkable results, Quick recovery
The Fraxel Laser is the new cutting edge treatment that helps remove years from your appearance, giving you tighter skin and impressive wrinkle correction. This FDA approved treatment also corrects sun damage, fine lines around the eyes, age spots, sun spots, melasma, and can improve scars and stretch marks. I have administered the Fraxel laser for six months now and have found that it delivers remarkable results. Patients return to work or other activities quickly with markedly improved skin and report feeling very proud of how their skin looks.
Overtime, I have been surprised by how little downtime is needed by patients after they have undergone the treatment. With the less aggressive treatment, re:fine or re:store, patients experience redness and tenderness for an hour or two, but then it subsides and patients go about their regular schedule and appear in public places without hesitation. With the more aggressive treatment, re:pair, patients are red and warm for 2-3 hours, after which it diminishes and is quite tolerable. The skin then becomes quite dry, turns darker and at the end of a week, flakes and sheds rapidly, revealing fresh, much younger looking, tighter skin. Patients report that the benefits of Fraxel are truly worth it.
We are able to offer a smart, new opportunity for patients, which is to have their Fraxel treatment while they are under sedation for another procedure. Many patients have opted to do this. This eliminates any discomfort from the treatment and patients take the opportunity to have it at a higher level to accomplish even more. One patient wrote, “I had a high level of fraxel on my neck as the same time as Dr. Gray did a blepharoplasty on my upper eye lids. Now, 6 days later, my eyes are healing up beautifully, and the fraxel result, after one treatment is phenomenal! Dr. Ballentyne said I might need 3 treatments, but I see huge improvement after just one! I’m thrilled! And I didn’t feel a thing!”
There is a range of Fraxel treatments which vary in strength of the treatment, downtime, number of treatments needed and results achieved. The most aggressive treatment, Fraxel re:pair, can produce dramatic improvement for severely damaged skin. Re:pair requires 2 to 3 treatments and more downtime and after-treatment care. Less aggressive treatments, like Fraxel re:store or Fraxel re:fine, can produce significant results for mild to moderately damaged skin over the course of 3 to 6 treatments. Normally, there is no after-treatment care with these less aggressive treatments and downtime is minimal. The Fraxel re:pair laser system is distinguished by its ability to ablate tissue deep within the dermis, which is a step beyond the less aggressive treatments.
Fraxel achieves its wonderful results by resurfacing the skin from between 11-15% at each session. The fraxel places microscopic-deep columns of laser light, microthermal zones, in the midst of areas of healthy skin tissue, rather than a thin, general ablation of the entire surface such as the traditional CO2 lasers do. The fractional treatment allows the skin to heal much faster than if it were treated all at the same time. It uses the body’s own healing process to create new healthy tissue to replace skin imperfections, remodel collagen and tighten skin texture. Four to five, sometimes six treatments are needed to achieve best results. This is an outpatient procedure, only requiring the application of a topical anesthetic cream. The fraxel laser is increasingly considered to be more effective and inarguably more clinically proven than the earlier CO2 lasers.