We are proud to be the first in Northeast Houston to offer Sciton Profractional Laser treatments. I researched and tried out many machines before purchasing the Sciton Profractional and Contour lasers. Acne scars and deep wrinkles and deep brown spots sometimes need a resurfacing laser to get the results that patients come to us expecting. With our Sciton, we can get results often with just one treatment! Not until the last two to three years with the advent of Fractionated Lasers could these problems be handled safely, without significant downtime or general anesthesia. In the past there were much greater risks of hypopigmentation, or of having that shiny skin appearance that just doesn't look natural. The fractional technology with erbium lasers is safe and offers patients excellent and consistent results.

The following is an exerpt by Dr. Barry Seckel, Harvard Professor and Author.

"During the past three years new technology called fractional laser resurfacing has been developed which has dramatically shortened recovery time and lessened the occurrence of complications. With fractional laser resurfacing the laser beam is broken up or fractionated into many small micro beams which are separated so that when they strike the skin surface small areas of the skin between the beams are not hit by the laser and left intact. These small areas of untreated skin promote a much more rapid recovery and healing with less risk of complications. The small areas treated by the fractional micro beams, called micro treatment zones, cause sufficient laser injury to promote new collagen production and resultant facial skin rejuvenation. (See diagram below)

The third red areas represent the non ablative fractional laser technologies which heat but do not ablate the skin. These lasers use an Erbium laser to heat small columns of the deep skin layers to promote new collagen production and plump the skin and skin wrinkles. Recovery time is much less than with traditional ablative CO2 and Erbium lasers.

Examples of the non ablative fractional lasers are the Fraxel® and the Palomar® Lux1540 fractional non-ablative lasers. These lasers are excellent for improving skin texture, plumping wrinkles and acne scars, and shrinking pores, but multiple treatments are required. More recently several new fractional ablative lasers (ablate means to surgically remove-see last column on right in diagram below) have been developed which actually remove the heated column of skin tissue and provide more substantial wrinkle removal and superficial skin tightening than the non ablative fractional lasers (See last figure on right in above diagram).

The Fraxel® Repair laser and the Lumenis® Bridge laser are ablative fractional CO2 lasers and the Sciton Profractional and Palomar® Lux2940 lasers are ablative fractional Erbium lasers. These new ablative fractional CO2 and Erbium lasers have the advantage of producing better wrinkle removal and skin rejuvenation than the non-ablative fractional lasers, such as the Fraxel® and Palomar® Lux1540 with less down time than the traditional non fractional ablative CO2 and Erbium lasers. These fractional ablative CO2 and Erbium lasers reach much deeper into the skin, 600 to 1000 microns, and can produce much more effective wrinkle removal and skin rejuvenation with significantly less down time and recovery than traditional CO2 and Erbium non fractional ablative laser resurfacing.

The Erbium laser produces less heat than the CO2 laser and traditionally recovery time, the time for redness of the skin to go away, has been less with the Erbium laser than with the CO2 laser." I know that if you read all the way to the bottom of this, that you are indeed interested in this new technology, and I can also be assured that you now know why the Sciton Profractional (erbium) is the leading laser in it's field.