Page 60 - Chapter 3 - An Introduction to Laser/IPL Hair Removal

Chapter 3 – Fundamentals of Laser/IPL Hair Removal 1st Edition
In fact, the reason why so many treatments fail is because the fluence is too low!! But, the higher the fluence, the higher the risk of damaging other tissues on the skin, particularly the epidermal layer.
So, we MUST mitigate this risk by using more cooling. The easiest way to consider this is to think of a balance:
More fluence = More surface cooling
Increasing the surface cooling will reduce the risk of epidermal damage (see ‘Risk’ section later).
Figure 22 – The higher the fluence you apply. The higher the success rate. But, the risk of unwanted damage also increases, so more cooling must also be applied
From the above graphic, we can see that a low fluence equates to a low success rate. This is very typical! While we may be in the ‘safe zone’, we will not generate good results.
So, we must use higher fluences to achieve the end-goal – irreversible destruction of the germ cells. To do this we must be in the ‘danger zone’ – dangerous because this level of fluence is highly likely to damage other tissues in the skin (collagen, vessel, the basal layer etc). Consequently, we must increase the cooling to balance this higher risk.
________________________________________________________________________ 60 Chapter 3 Laser/IPL Hair Removal
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