Skin | Texture

Many of the aesthetic treatments we rely upon to improve textural conditions involve triggering a “wound and heal” response in the skin. After all, by delivering a controlled injury, we force the skin to heal itself: therefore stimulating new collagen production. When the skin heals, it does so in a more physiologically normal way – which in turn restores a more youthful, rejuvenated complexion.

Laser is an effective and sophisticated means of resurfacing the skin and works by reacting with water in the skin, generating heat which ablates (or destroys) the top layers of the tissue. The first device used for this purpose was the CO2 laser, which – while very powerful and incredibly effective – resulted in a high incidence of burns, and hypo-pigmentation (where pigment is lost from the skin) and therefore fell out of favour in the last ten years. More recently, we have come to utilise the power of fractionated laser devices, which work by channelling a series of micro laser beams into the skin, where they create multiple tiny punctures (whilst preserving the tissue between each beam and keeping it intact). This allows for significantly faster healing and a much-reduced downtime – both of which are becoming a prerequisite in modern aesthetic procedures