“A very common question asked about Blepharoplasty is: “Should I use a laser for my Blepharoplasty?”. There’s a lot of marketing done on laser Blepharoplasty, and I’ll just say this. I have 12 to 14 lasers in my practice, and we have lasers that do just about everything. The bottom line on lasers are tools. Like any tool that we use in a surgery, it really depends on the operator of that tool. There are techniques where certainly lasers, no question, are the best option for performing the procedure, including the treatment of pigments, disorders of the vascularity, tattoo removal, and there are laser the hair removal techniques. There is no questions that lasers are the optimum source of energy for doing that.
With Blepharoplasty, I think this is a little more controversial. The benefits of doing laser Blepharoplasty, or an incision using a laser is, that there’s less bleeding. But frankly there’s very, very minuscule amounts of bleeding with Blepharoplasty using a simple scalpel, and no thermal damage. This is the key thing that we can argue about academically, but in the end having less thermal damage, in my opinion, with the incision results in better wound healing.
I use a micro cautery dissector called the Colorado needle tip when we’re doing any dissection below the skin surface. I like the incision with the scalpel better because of less thermal trauma. So there’s really not a great benefit in my opinion to doing incisions with the laser for upper Blepharoplasty, or lower Blepharoplasty, for that matter. Micro cautery needle tips work very well, and simple scalpel incisions. So I think this is more of a marketing technique than it is an actual surgical benefit. There’s nothing wrong with using a laser for Blepharoplasty, but no distinct advantages that I’m aware of that are provided by using a laser for making skin incisions.
Dr. Maas on Looking Your Best. As always, please send me your question at our blog DrMaas.com, visit our Facebook page at Facebook/Maasclinic or of course our website at Maasclinic.com. Thank you for letting me help you Look Your Best.”
