Recent advances in laser treatment of human skin

Abstract

Lasers have found many uses in dermatology for the treatment of cutaneous and superficial lesions. Moreover, lasers are now the treatment of choice for several clinical entities for which no reliable or effective modality was previously available. Laser dermatology is regarded as one of the fastest growing areas for new clinical applications in medicine today. The objectives of this presentation are to: 1) identify recent scientific and technologic advances in optical technologies as applied to human skin and explore future potential advances in optical technologies for their clinical application and or commercial development; and 2) emphasize the important contribution basic optics research in the development of clinical applications using lasers. Several laser systems have been commercially developed that produce reasonably good removal or blanching of hypervascular skin lesions due to their ability to destroy selectively cutaneous blood vessels. Light at the clinically relevant wavelengths (532-600 nm) produced by these laser systems is preferentially absorbed by hemoglobin in the upper dermis causing thermal damage and thrombosis in the targeted vessels. Moreover, the micro- and millisecond pulse durations produced by these lasers approximate the thermal relaxation time for dermal blood vessels thereby confining the energy to the target. These new lasers produce excellent lightening of port-wine stain and other hypervascular skin lesions without the adverse complications such as hypertrophic scarring, dyspigmentation, atrophy or induration.