Thank you for the question.
You are asking if you can get Juvederm fillers and acne scar laser treatment at the same
visit.
And in the substance of your question, you are stating that you want the Juvederm for
smile lines and for your lips and that you want laser done at the same time and will
there be an issue if you should do 1 before the other.
Well, I can give you some guidance with this question and this is an absence of photo but
I can give you some general rules of thumb as to how I approach patients like yourself
with this type of issue.
Just a little bit of background, I’m a board certified cosmetic surgeon and fellowship
trained oculofacial plastic and reconstructive surgeon practicing in Manhattan and Long Island
for over 20 years.
I have been performing laser for cosmetic procedures since the mid 90s since the original
CO2 lasers.
In my practice, we have multiple lasers for the treatment of acne, including CO2 laser,
Erbium laser, Nd:YAG laser and so certainly, we have a lot of technology and experience
with the treatment of acne scars.
And of course as well, I’ve been using fillers since the beginning when collagen was the
original filler like Zyderm, Zyplast.
So, I think that the essence of this question really is based on the degree of your acne
scars and what level of laser treatment you are going to undergo.
Let me explain that further, having a filler like Juvederm placed in areas where you are
not treating with the laser is certainly reasonable.
I perform procedures in my practice such as face lifting surgery, eyelids surgery, it
is not unusual to do fillers at the same time.
It’s just a matter of planning things out in a way that makes sense.
However if you are planning to have a very extensive laser procedure, well that means
you are going to be resurfacing or treating a large area and you may not enjoy the benefits
of your filler for a certain amount of time to allow for healing from the laser.
Now if the acne laser treatment is something like a fractional laser treatment and we do
this in our practice and we have fractional Erbium laser that we use for acne scars.
In that respect, this is something that is episodic treatment separated by several weeks
to allow for healing but it’s fractionated which means less down time and we are able
to allow the healing process to occur a little faster and it’s less disruptive to a person’s
life and schedule.
A lot of times, in strategy of treating acne, we use platelet-rich plasma (PRP), we also
do use fillers particularly for rolling acne scars.
There are a lot of ways to help people with acne.
We can do microneedling and basically I’m giving you some ideas why there is no right
or wrong answer just based on the question but I think that if you want to use a certain
guidance, just think if there is going to be a significant down time with the planned
laser and if there isn’t, then it is certainly fine to do the injectables at the same time
and save yourself a little bit of time and then come back for further treatments as appropriate.
So, I think that you have to speak with your doctor about the details about the type of
acne laser procedure that you will have.
If you haven’t done that as of yet, well this is an opportunity for you to get opinions
because when it comes to treating acne scars, you will get a lot of opinions everything
from subcision, microneedling, platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injections, lasers of different
kinds and with different strategies and acne treatment or acne surgery as well.
In addition to that is all of this is try to maximize the blending of the scars as well
as to maximize the overall quality of the skin so that the area where there is the most
shadowing from the acne and the most obvious pits and areas that is undesirable improves.
And so certainly for the purpose of smile lines which are more just normal skin changes
and improvement of lips, those things are usually not involved unless the acne scar
in the cheek area overlaps with the smile lines.
So, I think that it is important that you talk with qualified or experienced specialists.
If you have already done that, if you have, again discuss this issue with your doctor
and get a realistic understanding of what your down time will be with the acne scar
treatment.
So I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck and thank you for your question!