Fraxel laser is a form of fractional laser treatment that is used to improve skin elasticity and texture.  It can also be considered to be one form of laser resurfacing. Fraxel laser can be used to treat fine lines, wrinkles, acne scars, sun damage, melasma and other dyschromias (skin discolorations). It is most used by men and women above 40 who are suffering from skin problems, although there is a rising trend of younger people and teenager using such treatments as well to improve their skin conditions.

Types of fraxel laser

Currently, there are three types of fraxel laser treatments that you can choose from.

Fraxel re:pair: this is the most powerful laser treatment among the three options and will produce dramatic improvements in your skin condiiton. However, the recovery time will be much longer and the after treatment care will need to be more intensive.  Most of the before and after images of patients going through fraxel re:pair has shown significant improvements in their skin conditions. Unlike other fraxel laser treatments which require multiple sessions, fraxel re:pair is an one time treatment.

Fraxel re:store or Fraxel re:fine: these two types of laser treatments are suitable for patients with mild skin conditions. For such cases, the results can be quite significant as well.  For these two treatments, you need to attend multiple sessions, ranging from 3-6 times. The upside is that there is no downtime as patients can immediately resume their normal routinues after the laser procedures have been conducted.

How does fraxel laser work or what is fraxel laser

Before going to how fraxel laser work, here are the basic three components that you need to under:

• The epidermis—the outer layer of our skin
• The dermis—sub-layers of skin that include collagen and elastin
• Microscopic laser columns—rebuilding skin from the inside out

Underneath the epidermis, which our outer skin lies a complex network of collagen and elastin. These two components are proteins that help to keep our skin going young and tight.  When our skin is exposed to the sun or as we age, these proteins will break down, resulting in our skin looking aged and sagging.

What fraxel laser can do is to use microscopic laser columns that penerates deep into our sub layer of skins to create tiny wounds. This will trigger our body to naturally response to these wounds and begin their healing. xpedites your body’s remodeling of collagen and elastin, which results in tighter, fresher, more youthful-looking skin. This is how Fraxel treatment creates new skin from the inside out.

The good thing about fraxel laser is its precision. Due to the usage of microscopic lasers, it will not damage any areas except for the ones where we want to improve. This improves the recovery rate as the non affected area will not need to heal, unlike normal laser procedure where the entire area is treated with laser.

Is fraxel laser effective

The effectiveness of fraxel is mainly dependent on the experience of the surgeon and the application of the right treatment to the right problems.  That being said, you need to be careful of the surgeon or clinic that you are seeking treatment in. According to an informal survey of 394 patients, 54% responded that the fraxel treatment was effective. This implies that only 50% of the surgeons are able to apply the technique effectively. Hence, it is better to engage a doctor who have experiences in doing this. The most easy way is to ask for before and after images of fraxel laser patients. That way is to look at reviews to see who have a good experiene with the doctors that they have engaged. In future articles, we will be looking at reviews and recommending the best fraxel laser doctors in different states and countries ranging from states and cities in US such NYC, Arizona  to European cities such london in UK,  Athens in Greece, Madrid in Spain to even asia countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand etc.  If you see information on certain countries, please leave a comment so that I can get back to you as soon as possible.

Where to find fraxel laser doctors

Fraxel laser treatment is currently in a handful of countries ranging from Canada, United Kingdoms to even Asia and South American countries such as Venezuela, Brazil etc. The more interesting thing is which countries have the most interest in this new treatment. To find out, I used Google insight and keyed in the terms “fraxel laser” as well as other terms such as fractional laser co2, fractional laser resurfacing, co2 laser etc to see which countries have the highest search count. Not surprising, these following countries have the most interest according to the number of times people in that country have search for these terms:

Australia
United States
Canada
United Kingdoms

I dig a bit deeper and see which cities or states within each of countries have the strongest interest. Here are the results:

Australia: New South Wales (including cities such as Sydney), Victoria (which host the city Melbourne), Queensland and Western Australia (where Perth resides)

United States:  Flordia, California, Washington, New Jersey, Texas, New York, Georgia , Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virgina

Canada: Ontario (where Toroto and Vancouver resides), Alberta and British Columbia. The rest of the states such as Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Northwest terrorities did not exhibit any interest in this treatment yet.

UK: not much data except that England has the most interest relative to other part of UK including Wales, Ireland, Scotland and Channel islands. London, Southampton and Manchester seem to have a bit of interest in fraxel laser.

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Posted by on September 19th, 2010 :: Filed under Uncategorized
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