Hallo welcome to my frequently asked questions,
today we are talking about laser resurfacing,
what can laser resurfacing be used for
and how can it benefit you.
My name is Dr. Julian De Silva
and I’m a London based facial cosmetic and plastic surgeon
and I specialize only in the face
and have been using lasers
and some form of another for over 10 years.
So, today we’re gonna be talking about
what can laser resurfacing be used for,
we'll also talk about when laser should be best avoided
and then we’ll talk about,
well what can give you the best possible result
when considering having any form of laser resurfacing.
So, first of all what are the benefits
or potential uses of laser resurfacing?
Well laser resurfacing has the potential
to rejuvenate the quality of your skin.
So, it can treat fine lines, wrinkles,
it can treat pigmentation and sun spots
that is often secondary to sun damage.
It can treat fine scars in the skin such as from acne scaring.
It can also be used to reduce the size of pores
for some patients particularly fine lines around the eyes
and around the lips or it can be effective in reducing these
and improving the quality of your skin.
and certainly it was a big innovation
when laser resurfacing first came about
because before that time we really didn’t have technology
in order to improve this.
So, in terms of the patients we should be more cautious about,
well if you have a darker pigmentation or more ethnic skin
well laser resurfacing needs to be more cautiously done
for some patients particularly with darker pigmentation
it may not be suitable to have laser resurfacing.
Certainly I would advocate being more cautious
in such patients and generally doing a skin patch test
before doing laser resurfacing.
Well this is a very safe way
of identifying patients who may have a prolonged recovery
from laser and laser resurfacing is the best pointing in.
if you have known types
of scaring and scar conditions such keloid scaring
or other relatively rare dermatological conditions,
well it’s important to let your physician or surgeon know,
so that they can take that into account.
It may be some situations that again laser test patch
is best advocated or in some patient
it may be best avoid all together.
Also if you’ve been taking any recent medication
such as Accutane for acne,
well this can affect the healing of the skin
and so, it’ll be important to wait a period of months
after stopping Accutane to make sure
it’s safe in order to have laser resurfacing.
Moving on from that well expectations
are also important when considering laser resurfacing.
Because if you also have additional aging and lose skin
and generally some effects of gravity,
well laser resurfacing will improve the quality of the skin
but it won’t lift the face.
And sometimes it may be useful to combine laser resurfacing
with non-surgical or surgical techniques
to give you the best possible result.
So, the final thing we were going to talk about
is how can I ensure that I get
the best possible laser resurfacing?
Well it’s important to consider both the potential benefits
and advantages.
It’s certainly important to consider
the potential indications that are best avoided
and also it’s worth considering what you’re looking to achieve.
This maybe a combination of combining laser resurfacing
with non-surgical or surgical techniques,
my preference is to use a state of the art modern laser
that has Co2 resurfacing that will tighten the deepest skin
Erbium laser that will tighten the superficial skin
and this state of the art technology means
that you’re giving the maximum potential benefits
from tightening the skin.
In addition, I personally use bio-technology,
the use platelet rich plasma,
which means using your own growth factors
to heal the area that is being treated from the laser faster.
Essentially this means taking a little bit of your own blood,
that blood is put into a machine that will spin
and then double spin your blood in order
to concentrate your own growth factors.
And then these growth factors are put into the areas
where the skin has been laserd after laser resurfacing.
And what this does is it enhances
the recovering from laser resurfacing.
So, in summary we’ve talked about the potential benefits
of laser resurfacing,
we’ve talked about the potential downsides,
and we’ve also talked about
how you can the best possible result.
I hope this information has been useful for you,
thank you for watching.