Question: I am female, 49 years old, and I have fine wrinkles on my upper chest. I am below average in weight so they are not fat related. I am interested in getting laser skin resurfacing in this area. Does this procedure hurt?
Answer: Laser skin resurfacing on the chest must be performed in a very careful manner to prevent any scarring as this area of the body will not heal in a similar way as the face can. With that said, because we have to be very careful with that skin, seldom can we create any significant amount of wrinkle reduction with standard laser resurfacing. We can; however, treat this are with fractionated laser resurfacing, such as the ProFractional laser by Sciton, which lasers small holes in the skin, but leaves the surrounding skin intact and uninjured and therefore healing progresses very quickly and scarring can be avoided. Because the deeper layer of the skin is treated with this type of a laser we do get significant new collagen deposition, which in turn tightens the skin and creates wrinkle reduction. We have had some pretty significant success combining the ProFractional laser by Sciton with an ultrasound-based rejuvenation treatment called Ultherapy, which uses targeted ultrasound to heat the deeper layer of the tissue, about 3 mm underneath the surface of the skin. The combination of these 2 treatments can provide excellent skin tightening and wrinkle reduction in virtually any area of the body and face.