Page 70 - LASERS & IPLS IN MEDICAL/AESTHETIC APPLICATIONS

Chapter 1 – Fundamentals of Medical/Aesthetic Lasers and IPLs v1.1
Introduction – “Selective Photothermolysis”
● Everyone knows that heating an object can change its structure. This is why we cook meat and vegetables – breaking down the proteins or cellulose makes them easier to eat and digest.
● So, when we treat objects in the skin with light, we are trying to induce a temperature rise in them. That is the point of all laser/IPL treatments – heating a particular target.
● In essence, we use light energy to induce heat energy in a specific target, to generate some sort of desired change.
‘Selective Photothermolysis’ is a very important cornerstone of many of today’s aesthetic laser/IPL treatments and has proved to be very successful in many cases. Watch a short video here. Here is the pdf of that video.
However, our experience is that many laser/IPL users do not really understand the basic principles behind this concept. There is a ‘disconnect’ between what the laser/IPL is firing, and the subsequent reactions in the skin.
There are also a number of ‘mythconceptions’ which appear to be widely believed, even though they have no scientific or clinical backing! We will describe and debunk some of these later.
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Chapter 1 LEVEL A Fundamentals of Lasers/IPLs
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