Beauty Tech Review: Fractional Resurfacing Devices
Fractional resurfacing procedures have taken the aesthetics and dermatology market by storm. They are able to treat sun damage and reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles safely. Keith Veseleny, Editor of American Health & Beauty spoke with Dr. Michael Kaminer while attending the annual conference of the American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) earlier this year.
"The big advantage with fractional resurfacing is the safety margin. The key is that we leave little zones of sparing of tissue between the zones that are treated with the laser and that increases the safety dramatically," says Dr. Kaminer. He uses the ProFractional from Sciton at his Boston dermatology office, SkinCare Physicians. He says, "The driving force of the Sciton laser is the Erbium platform, and then one of the nice things about the ProFractional is that it has the ability to do two things. One component is that it can do fractional deep resurfacing and... also do more shallow confluent resurfacing, which is a nice alternative, having one device for certain kinds of skin conditions."
Actual Before and After Results of Dr. Michael Gold,
Photos Courtesy of Sciton
He says the ideal candidate is someone who has a little bit of sun damage, "a little bit of discoloration, some enlarged pores, fine lines.... The people who have become even better candidates, or see a bigger result, are the ones who have deeper lines. Particularly in the upper lip and the cheek and who really need something a little bit more on the aggressive resurfacing side to get what they're looking for."
According to Dr. Kaminer, the best place to use the ProFractional device is the face, "because the face responds well, it heals well, it likes what the laser does.... Once you go off the face, the skin and its quality changes... you have to be much more gentle with it. When I go off the face, I tend to go much more shallow and much less dense." Dr. Kaminer states, "You can treat the back of the hands, you can treat the neck, when you go onto the chest, you really have to back off quite a bit, and in some cases, I might advise against that."
Dr. Kaminer advises that the number of treatments needed depends on the depth. If the patient needs deep treatment, it usually is only one session, and for those who need a more shallow treatment, 2-4 are generally necessary. The amount of time it takes to complete a procedure varies based on the depth of treatment and amount of anesthesia needed. "There's two different ways you can perform the treatment. If you're going shallow, then you can do it with a topical anesthetic.... with or without maybe some Valium or some Demerol.... Once you start to get into deeper ablative resurfacing, where you're going down, deeper than about 100 microns, then typically what people will do is an hour of the topical anesthetic, Valium, some other forms of pain medicine, and then injectable anesthesia, so intraoral neuroblocks, forehead blocks and then local anesthesia in the cheeks and temples, so the anesthesia itself can take 45 minutes to an hour to put in, and then the procedure usually takes about a half hour to an hour to do. So deeper ablative is a 2, 2 and a half hour procedure in a lot of offices."
Downtime for this procedure is small when compared with many surgical options. Dr. Kaminer says, "If you do the microlaser peel, my rule of thumb is one day for every 10 microns, so if you do a 20 micron peel, it's a couple days that's your social downtime. Everybody's a little bit different, so I tell people 2 to 4 days.... If you do a 50 micron micro laser peel, which is that superficial confluent laser, you're talking about 5 days before you can put some makeup on... and see your friends."
How much does ProFractional cost? For light resurfacing, Dr. Kaminer says, "you could be in the $1000 to $2500 range... when you start to get more involved, a little more depth, a little bit more fractional resurfacing, the price point kicks up because there's a lot more involved with anesthesia for the procedure and other things and that can be in the $4000-$6000 range for sort of the more aggressive face resurfacing.... Off the face is a little bit of a combination of those, so you know a chest or a neck might be a thousand to 1500, 2000 dollars. Hands, might be in the 1000 to 1500 dollar range, maybe a little bit less because it's a smaller area."
Dr. Michael Kaminer
American Health and Beauty, in an effort to provide the most up-to-date information to our readers, presents the Beauty Tech Review. Our first installment in this ongoing series discusses Fractional Resurfacing technology. Join American Health and Beauty editor, Keith Veseleny, as he speaks with leading physicians who share their knowledge on each laser platform.
The Beauty Tech Review: Fractional Resurfacing - will include: Dr. Heidi Waldorf on {!Fraxel R:store Dual, | Fraxel} Dr. Etai Funk on Matrix IR, Dr. Michael Kaminer on ProFractional, Dr. Janee Steinberg on Sandstone Matrix, Dr. Lori Brightman on eMatrix, Dr. Deborah Sarnoff on SmartSkin, Dr. Christopher Zachary on Fraxel Repair, and Dr. Bill Johnson on SmartXide DOT Therapy.
