Deep Laser Skin Resurfacing Explained by Facial Plastic Surgeon Dr. Andrew Campbell of Quintessa in Milwaukee, WI
Dr. Andrew Campbell
When patients come to Quintessa complaining of wrinkles, there’s a lot of options. But if they have really deep wrinkles, especially around their mouth, there’s really very few options that we have other than deep skin resurfacing. Now, I personally use an Erbium laser, which is going to give them less downtime and less risk. But this is a very aggressive way to treat wrinkles and yet a very effective way to treat wrinkles. And in my opinion, the only way to treat really, really deep wrinkles successfully. The laser literally vaporizes the skin down into the reticular dermis and then we allow the skin to heal from what are called pilar sebaceous glands, which are anything from your hair follicles to your sweat glands. These are all lined with epidermal cells. They’ll come up through those pores and they’ll resurface with brand new fresh skin.
At the same time, there’s a tremendous amount of new collagen that goes into the dermis, which creates a lot of skin tightening, and that gives us the wrinkle reduction. The healing process takes about seven to 10 days, during which time they can’t wear makeup, they can’t go outside. They’re wearing kind of a greasy balm and they look awful. But after that, the results are absolutely outstanding, with this brand new, fresh, wrinkle-free skin. They start all over again, and they always ask me, “Well, how long is this going to last?” And I’ll say, “It’ll last as long as you keep good care of your skin, because we just turned the clock back and you’re starting all over again.” Patients that do good skin care and sunblock, they’re going to have far fewer wrinkles for the rest of their lives. This laser resurfacing can truly be an outstanding procedure.