Page 16 - Chapter 3 - Laser/IPL Hair Removal

Chapter 3 – Fundamentals of Laser/IPL Hair Removal 2nd Edition
The ‘Fear Factors’
Every new (and not so ‘new’) laser/IPL user goes through two, major ‘fear factors’. These are
Fear of ‘burning’ or ‘injuring’ their patient/client
Fear of producing a bad or poor results, leading to an unhappy patient/client
The first of these is mainly caused by a lack of understanding of the equipment and its proper applications. In the vast majority of cases, this is simply due to delivering too low a fluence. The fear of burning a patient/client’s skin inevitably leads to the fluence output being ‘turned down’. While this will indeed lower the risk of ‘burning’, it will also reduce the likelihood of a successful outcome...
...which leads to fear factor 2! Of course it does!! Successful outcomes are directly related to the applied fluence. So, turning the fluence lower will not improve your results (in the vast majority of situations).
So, how do we get around this conundrum?
It all comes down to skin cooling. If the proper amount of pre- and post-cooling is applied to the skin, then the likelihood of ‘burning’ the skin is greatly reduced. Cooling the skin properly allows us to increase the fluence, thereby, improving the overall result.
The answer to both fear factors is, therefore, PROPER SKIN COOLING – as we shall see!! It really is that simple...
________________________________________________________________________ 16 Chapter 3, Ed. 2.0 Laser/IPL Hair Removal
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