Hybrid Lasers: A New Era for Skin Rejuvenation
Dermatologist Ofir Artzi, MD discusses the emergence of hybrid ablative and non-ablative laser devices that promise to expand treatment protocols and improve results.
For centuries, facial skin rejuvenation has been the focus of beauty and skin care, and it continues to be listed in the top-ten nonsurgical aesthetic procedures performed each year across the globe. While the perception of beauty is highly influenced by cultural and psychosocial preferences, facial skin appearance imparts substantial impacts on self-esteem and emotional health and a flawless complexion remains a universally sought-after feature. Yet, despite its centrality in the aesthetic field, skin quality remains loosely defined, with few objective and standardized parameters available for the assessment of skin status and treatment outcomes.
A consensus definition of skin quality, proposed by a global, multinational panel of dermatologists and aesthetic physicians, laid down skin tone evenness, skin surface evenness, skin firmness and skin glow as the possible categories to be considered when outlining and prioritizing treatment needs. To improve these (and other) universally accepted different skin quality parameters, a physician should design customized treatment algorithms that address the respective tissue structures and depths according to the patient.
Skin rejuvenation technologies in the current era of consumer-centric healthcare are aimed to improve skin quality while minimizing pain, potential adverse effects, and downtime. In recent years, laser-based skin resurfacing techniques, which currently account for 33.2% of the skin resurfacing technologies market, have cycled between ablative and non-ablative therapies, with the depth of effect primarily dictated by the location and concentration of their respective chromophores.
Most ablative and non-ablative lasers rely on fractional pulse delivery, which has revolutionized the laser resurfacing field of thermally damaged microcolumns separated by untreated healthy zones, which are thought to minimize damage and hasten healing.
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