Laser Therapy

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Acne vulgaris affects around 89% of teenagers worldwide, and many adults carry the condition into their thirties and forties. Clinical depression, low self esteem and peer group exclusion are common associated with acne in teenagers, and the same affects at a lower level often persist into adulthood. The financial cost of acne can also be enormous, as various cosmetic acne treatments are tried with varying levels of success. The acnegenic population holds huge promise for laser clinic owners – patients and clinic owners can help each other out. Laser acne treatments are longer term, more universally suitable and have fewer side effects than other common acne treatments; for laser clinic owners, the acne treatment market is enormous and has the potential to greatly increase usage time on a laser machine.

Laser Acne Treatment: Excess Sebum
Acne development is the end result of a matrix of factors. Excess sebum production, combined with inflammation, accumulation of dead skin cells, bacterial action and even stress contribute to acne. Laser acne treatment can help patients whose acne is a result of excessive sebum production.

Several low intensity laser acne treatments or intense pulsed light treatments can help both decrease sebaceous gland size and lower sebum production. The effect is obtained thermally, and the highest wavelength laser of 1450nm is particularly effective for reducing sebaceous activity. However, all laser machine wavelengths are suitable, and lower length machines may be more versatile as a part of the entire practice.

Laser Acne Treatment: Propionibacterium acnes
Abbreviated as P.acnes, this bacterium lives inside the pores in an anaerobic environment, and cause inflammation and the change from oil into pustules. Traditional treatments for susceptibility to P.acnes infestation are both topical and oral antibiotics – however there is a high risk of creating a resistant population of bacteria with these methods.

Laser acne treatment is emerging as an effective therapy for destroying populations of P.acnes before they become entrenched. The bacteria are photosensitive, and a combination of blue and red light can both destroy the underlying bacterial populations, and reduce the inflammation that they cause. This allows the skin to heal naturally more rapidly, and improves appearance for clients substantially. Wavelengths between 400 and 700nm have been the most effective in trials.

Laser Acne Treatment: Scar Repair
Scarring is adjunct to most acne, and persists long after it is gone. This means that up to 89% of the population (the percentage that suffer acne during their teenage years) could be candidates for laser acne treatment to reduce the scarring.

Healing occurs quickly for patients and there is minimal downtime. Unlike previous resurfacing treatments, laser scar removal has been refined so that there are actually large swathes of untreated skin in the midst of treated skin. The entire face is not a large, weeping wound, and so new pimples that form during the short healing time after laser acne treatment for scars don’t have the capacity for damage that they do after a chemical peel, for example.
source:articlebase.com