How the Fraxel Laser Works

The concept of the laser is to create a series of vertical wounds in the skin separated by non-treated, uninjured skin. The best way to understand how fractional resurfacing works is to imagine what happens to a lawn when it’s aerated. A similar process, on a microscopic scale, is done to the skin with fractional laser treatment. The laser creates small injuries, the diameter of a hair shaft, in the skin leaving normal, untreated skin in between. This untreated area heals the wound by removing the treated skin and replacing it with new healthy tissue. During each treatment only a fraction of the skin is treated. Both the Fraxel Repair and Fraxel Restore treatments may then be repeated three to five times at 3 to 5 week intervals, until the whole skin has been resurfaced.

Advantages

The advantage of treating the skin this way is that there is less downtime and risk of adverse events while obtaining a significant clinical improvement. This process is specifically designed to give rise to smoother, clearer skin with minimal risks and down time. The other advantage of this approach is that, unlike the ablative resurfacing procedures, it is safe enough to treat areas off the face such as the neck, chest and hands.

History

In trying to correct sun damage, scars, and aging skin there is no such thing as a free lunch. Aggressive treatments usually produce the best results, removing the surface of the skin. These techniques, which include deep chemical peels, dermabrasion and ablative carbon dioxide and erbium lasers are often painful, have a prolonged down time and can have up to a 20% risk of scarring. Attempts to improve risk and downtime resulted in non-ablative lasers (which leave skin intact), intense pulsed lights, pulsed dye lasers, and infrared lasers with aggressive cooling. These improve age spotting and blood vessels with only limited improvement in lines and wrinkles. Hence the further development of laser, culminated in fractionated laser technology.