Question: I am a creature of comfort and I am terrified of how badly my laser hair removal will hurt afterwards. Are there options for numbing agents for patients having laser hair removal treatments?
Answer: Depending on the area of the body being treated, there certainly are ways of numbing the area as long as it is a relatively small portion of the body, as when we try to numb overly large areas, the numbing agent can actually become toxic and there have been reports of deaths due to large amounts of numbing cream being placed on large portions of patient’s bodies.
Fortunately for us, we have the new Duet laser hair removal system, which combines multiple diode lasers with a suction apparatus and for large surface areas such as legs and backs, the treatment is nearly painless and certainly much less uncomfortable than the previous technology. For smaller areas like the lip or chin, we can certainly apply some numbing cream to that area to make your treatments much more comfortable. Most patients however do not need this as they find the treatments easy to tolerate and certainly after the treatment is over, there really is no discomfort whatsoever.