Less Expensive Skin Resurfacing by Longer Pulse CO 2 Laser

Abstract

Resurfacing of the skin for eliminating defects like acne scars, wrinkles, keloids, etc. has traditionally been done by ultrapulse CO₂ lasers in which there are very short pulses with high peak power in a repetitive fashion. The pulse duration may range from 0.1 to 200 per second with 1000 pulses per second. A short laser exposure with a high power density ablates the same volume of tissue as a longer exposure at a lower power. The high-power lasers are more expensive. A lower-power laser with longer pulse intervals provides a less expensive alternative. This paper describes the resurfacing results achieved with a lower-power and longer-pulse laser available at a fraction of the cost. The Luxar CO₂ laser was used in pulse mode, with an exposure time of 20 milliseconds and a repetition rate of 20 times per second. The power level of 2–5 W pulse rate was evaluated on 69 patients using the following four metrics: (1) postoperative pain reported by the patient, (2) length of recovery period, (3) quality of achieved final result as measured by patient's satisfaction, and (4) complications. In each of these four regards the selected protocol was found to be very satisfactory and the results were comparable to those reported by the ultrapulse lasers.