Acne scar laser treatment stands out among all acne treatments in effectiveness. Acne scarring comes under cosmetic disfigurements posing psychological problems to the patients. It is notable here that most of these can very well be corrected using laser as skin resurfacing modality.
Acne scar laser treatment involves using a light beam from a carbon dioxide laser. The latter vaporizes the upper layers of damaged skin at specific and controlled levels of penetration.
Introducing selective photothermolysis has led to great improvements in the use of lasers for resurfacing the skin. This is because it has reduced thermal damage to the skin during the procedure.
Because of the reduction in the duration of the laser light pulses, thermal damage to the skin is minimized and therefore the risk of scarring is also minimized.
The most current procedures utilize a laser light beam of high intensity, which instantly destroys the skin tissue. CO2 and Er:Yag lasers are reported to give the best treatment results.
They are able to carry out tissue vaporization in a highly specific manner by using a powerfully-focused beam of light which can very accurately remove the outer skin layers. This means that they vaporize the scarring and smoothe out the skin to give it a better appearance.
For most patients, Er:YAG lasers will give the best results for acne scar laser treatment. This type of laser is often used for treating mild to moderate acne scars and has the benefit of causing less thermal damage than other types of laser.
The Er:YAG type of laser has a much higher water absorption coefficient when compared to the CO2 laser. The water in the tissues absorbs most of the laser energy, and therefore less thermal damage to the skin occurs with the Er:YAG.
The more limited penetration of these lasers into the skin triggers a histo-pathological improvement less pronounced than that of carbon dioxide laser. However, Er:YAG laser shows potential as an acne scar removal treatment especially in the treatment of mild to moderate superficial rhytides and scars. In fact it is the best acne scar laser treatment for acne scars that are not very deep.
See the author Simon Paisley’s site to get more about ways to treat acne scars and acne scar dermabrasion.