Question:
Has anyone heard of or can post a link about Treatment Tattoo Removal with a laser similar
to the laser used to remove tattoos (or bleaching tattoos)?
Answer:
- , it's been in the news for the past couple of years.The type of
laser being used on P is called an eximer laser. And in fact I got an
ad in the mail from a company doing laser for P.
Short blurb at the new NPF site on the following page:
http://www.psoriasis.org/d200.htm
(laser bit is towards the bottom of the page or just do a find on the
word) and here's another link to a more detailed discussion:
http://blueprint.bluecrossmn.com/article/remedy/100291425;$sessionid$...
My employer sponsors regular health info seminars and had one with a
derm (not a P specialist) a month or so ago. When I asked her about
these, she said that like the tattoo removing lasers, they allow for
very targeted application of the laser through honing on a pre-set
color differential. She said that there hasn't been a problem with
koebner effect (something I still find amazing and not something she
could explain). She confirmed that this is basically being looked upon
as probably not real practical for those with fairly extensive
coverage.
- I don't think she could have been more incorrect about the "color
differential" stuff. *Both* for tattoo removal *and* for psoriasis. In
tattoo removal, the frequency of the laser light is such that it causes
the miniscule blobs of pigment to vibrate themselves to pieces,
and those pieces then get "flushed" out of the skin through several
natural processes. The light used tends to be red, infrared, and
sometimes green (depends on the inks used in the tattoo).
The laser used for psoriasis, however, is UVB light, *just* like in the
UVB booths at dermatologist's offices. The advantage of the laser
over the booths is that it allows a small section of skin to be exposed
to UV light, thereby reducing the chances of side effects (you're not
bathing *good* skin in possibly cancer-causing light). There is no
"color differential" involved, it is simply UVB working its "magic" on
a very small scale (no pun intended).
This is the reason for the lack of Koebner effect - at least as much of
a lack as there is with "normal" UVB treatment. The excimer laser,
very much *unlike* the tattoo-removal lasers, isn't trying to "blast"
psoriasis away. It can be thought of more like a "UVB flashlight,"
delivering the useful light *only* to the skin which needs it, thus
lowering risk of systemic side-effects (including full-body burns and
other such nastiness).
Older laser-tattoo-removal systems used a carbon-dioxide laser,
which operates in the far infrared spectrum, and could cause
considerable damage to the skin itself. This would be a large
concern for psoriatics (Koebner phenomenon again). The current
crop of tattoo-removal lasers are more precisely "tuned" to the
inks, so the risk of skin damage is much lower.
>She confirmed that this is basically being looked upon
>as probably not real practical for those with fairly extensive
>coverage.
Absolutely correct. The UVB lasers only expose a circle of skin
about an inch in diameter to the laser light at a time, so if a
person's coverage is large, the dermatologist would need to spend
a *long* time zapping them with the laser over and over. Compared
to booth-style UVB, it would quickly become an economic
nightmare for the patient, and the benefits of *not* getting full-body
UVB would also be negated.
