Question: What is fractional skin resurfacing? What does it do, and how effective is it?
Answer: Fractional laser resurfacing is when a laser is broken up into different segments creating small areas of skin injury while leaving the remainder area of the skin completely intact. This is similar to aerating a lawn. Some of the fractionated lasers are ablative in that they actual vaporize the tissue, and other lasers are nonablative where they just heat up or injure some of the tissue. Either way, it is an extremely safe and reliable way to treat the skin for a variety of disorders from pigmentation problems to fine wrinkling and, when performed aggressively, can even cause some skin tightening and significant wrinkle reduction. I have personally used the ProFractional laser by Sciton in a very aggressive manner for acne scarring, and have found it to be exceptionally effective when used over a series of treatments spaced about a month apart. In fact, I consider ProFractional laser treatments my gold standard for acne scarring at this time.