Laser Resurfaces Facial Skin

Last October, Pat, 61, figured she needed a change in her life something for herself that would make her feel good.

She decided to have her entire face resurfaced.

People like Pat who are tired of having crow’s feet around their eyes or smoker’s wrinkles around their mouth used to have to suffer through a painful chemical peel.

But not anymore, thanks to a new laser surgery technique. Pat’s pleased with the results. “It really looks great,” she says. “I don’t have any wrinkles and my face is as smooth as it can be.”

The procedure, called laser resurfacing, uses a CO2 laser and is more precise and less painful than a chemical peel, says Dr. Joel Sears, a Spokane dermatologic surgeon.

Sears has performed nearly 30 of the procedures since the technology first became available nearly a year ago. He says he knows of only one other Spokane dermatologist who does the procedure.

While a chemical peel can give the same results as laser surgery, Sears says, there is no way to know how deep the chemical will go and there is the risk of altering skin color.

Laser surgery is more controlled and precise and only removes the top layer of skin, Sears says. It can remove only one or two errant wrinkles, or the whole face can be resurfaced.

The procedure itself is painful, so the patient’s skin is numbed with a local anesthetic. The skin heals over in one to two weeks, Sears says, and it’s pink for two to three months.

The effects can last anywhere from one to several years, he says.

Pat’s procedure took about two hours and her face was deadened, so she felt no pain.

“The pain was washing my face,” she says.

Her discomfort lasted about a week and the redness was gone in a month.

Pat did not want her last name used because she feels the procedure is a private matter. “I did it for me, not for what everybody else thought about it,” she says.

While the price varies from state to state, the procedure costs about $800 for one facial area or $3,000 for the entire face, says Dr. Anna Ragaz, a Seattle dermatologist. She has also been doing laser resurfacing for about a year.

Ragaz also likes the control the procedure offers. “We can see how many layers we are removing,” she says.

In other methods of resurfacing, Ragaz says, there is no way of knowing how much skin is being removed and there is the danger of going too deep and actually causing scars.

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