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Well, I am 12 months past my fifth Fravel in August 2007, so i guess I will post some comments since quite alot of ppl have been lamenting abt the lack of posts from ex-fraxelers.I have about 40% to 50% improvement, and even today, it seems I am still geeting minor improvement. Of course, i have also been supplementing the fravel treatment with post treatment creams. I have used Vitamin E cream, and have started on Mederma cream abt two months ago. They seem to made some improvemnent, although I can't be sure if its the cream that's helping or my skin continuing to improve from the fravel treatment.
What type of scars did you have and how deep were they?
Thank you for sharing your experience with us.
I have light to moderate scarring. A combination of boxscar and shallow pitted scars. The point I am making is that today I can look at the mirror without too much regret on what might had been. While I am not completely satisfied yet, and I honestly doubt anyone would ever be completely satisfied with their complexion, I am fairly happy with the way I look now. btw, i am a guy if anyone of you are wondering.
Hi guys
recently my derm keep talking about this fraxel thingy to reduce raised scars(acne scar) on my face.
asked him... but want to make sure he didnt lie to me.. haha
my question is:
what about scars/scabs that left after the surgery? how bad it is? and how many days it takes to fully recover (back to normal)?
and how long is the downtime?
my downtime on repair as far as I'm concerned is now 5+ weeks. Still red and not really happy about it. Not happy at all. :S Skin is almost blotchy and when the dermatologist says "be patient... wait" I'm like, almost all the literature says 3 weeks. Argh. I should have had my neck zapped. As is, face is pinkish, neck is normal. urgh.
From what I've read, fraxel is best for shallower scars. So I don't think it works well with ice picks or deep boxcars.
to each his/her own, check out "caesar2"'s gallery. she got wonderful results from fraxel
my downtime on repair as far as I'm concerned is now 5+ weeks. Still red and not really happy about it. Not happy at all. :S Skin is almost blotchy and when the dermatologist says "be patient... wait" I'm like, almost all the literature says 3 weeks. Argh. I should have had my neck zapped. As is, face is pinkish, neck is normal. urgh.
I got really red for my first fraxel. The demarcation line lasted for weeks. I just had my third and you can barely tell. I bought the Dermacia MD makeup this time and it is highly oxygenated so that may have helped. This one was the most aggressive so far and my only complaint is that I broke out this time.
I'm 2 months post my 6th treatment and Ive had barely any improvement and its caused hyperpigmentation. I don't approve this treatment currently
Aw that's too bad. My 50 yo acne-scarred skin has improved so much. Usually, hyperpigmentation is caused by the sun after any treatment. My skin tone is the best it has ever been after 3. Did you only notice this after the 6th one? It is really important to wear SPF 25 or more for several months after treatment and to wear hats, etc.
hey guys... just a question please.. i know it might sound stupid.
But if some1 gets an improvement of 20% after a fraxel repair. Can he get a total of 4 fraxel rapairs on a 2 years interval to achieve beautiful results ?? In other words, if he got a 20% from one fraxel repair, can he expect another 20% from another one?
my downtime on repair as far as I'm concerned is now 5+ weeks. Still red and not really happy about it. Not happy at all. :S Skin is almost blotchy and when the dermatologist says "be patient... wait" I'm like, almost all the literature says 3 weeks. Argh. I should have had my neck zapped. As is, face is pinkish, neck is normal. urgh.
Hey whats up,I'm going to in for fraxel repair in a week.I posted a question on Realself.com about redness.My question was if it was ok to get a spray tan,which I've done in the past for Bodybuilding.A doctor had said it was fine after the 2 week mark.I have like 3 local salons that charge like 15 bucks and it lasts 5 days.So this is a good alternative even if your really white,it blends in and you won't see the redness.
ok..i've been reading through all these posts..and i'm still not finding that Fraxel is worth the money. $6000 to get maybe 30% improvement? Can't i get the same improvement from needling for a shit load less money? Is this highway robbery charging $1000 per fraxel with crappy results like im reading. The amount of money they are charging is taking advantage of people's misery. It's not wonder they have no prevention method for acne and shitty cures for acne like accutaine. They make more money by keeping our acne alive for as long as possible so we can get tons of scars so then they can make thousands of dollars with their stupid lasers and drive their BMWs and live in mansions while they rake in the $$$s.
And for anyone that cares..there are ways to prevent acne. It's just not known because there is NO profit in a cure. Disease is very very profitable. Since the rates of all diseases are skyrocketing in the United States. This is not an accident. The rates of acne started increasing as they increased all their virus and bacteria containing vaccinations and started putting dangerous mercury dental fillings in our teeth while adding dangerous chemicals to our food, water and beauty products. This all lowers your immune system, destroys your organs and makes you powerless against bacteria, viruses and fungus that start emerging through your skin. (the real cause of acne). By the way, the reason doctors don't know any causes for acne or any diseases is because the pharmaceutical companies fund the medical schools and all the scientific experiments. Everything is biased to sell you drugs and not cure you. Everything you hear is all propaganda from the pharmaceutical companies. Doctors are nothing more then pharmaceutical sales reps and laser sales reps. All the news you hear on tv and in magazines is paid for by the sponsors which are pharmaceutical sales companies. The FDA is supposed to protect the citizens but unfortunately that's not true. The FDA is funded by the pharmaceutical companies. That is why we had acne..and i'm mad as hell. And i'm going to rant about this until there are changes in our system. And if anyone is interested in finding out the cause of acne, cancer, MS, autism and all diseases i would recommend reading the books by "dr. hulda clark"..she cures cancer and aids. Her information led me to discover why i had acne and it was her information that led me to cure myself.
Based on my own experience (after 4 Fraxel-II treatments), I think I have about 25% improvement in my scars. I have posted my pics in this thread and you'll see that my scars are pretty severe in that I have lots of icepicks and box scars concentrated on my cheeks/forehead.
For those who are trying to decide on whether or not to go with Fraxel, my honest opinion is to first give dermaroller or skin needling a try over a course of 6 months. Now Dermaroller is not the cure all, but it is definitely more cost-effective than Fraxel. If you do enough research, the theory behind dermarolling/skin needling is the same as Fraxel-II. The difference is just how you do it. It cost me close to $3K for 4 full-face Fraxel treatments with quite a bit of downtime .. anywhere from 4-5 days for each treatment. The improvements I say is about 20% mostly on the cheeks. The scars on the forehead have not responded as much. The overall skin texture looks much better. Now if you were to do cost-benefit analysis, its definitely not worth it. Even if you were to get only 20-25% improvement from DermaRoller, why not opt for that than Fraxel. I chose Fraxel because I thought somehow a laser treatment must be superior to anything else and also that since it costs more, it must be more effective. But the more I have read on Dermarolling/Skin Needling lately, I couldn't have been further from the truth.
I believe professional Dermarolling costs anywhere from $400-500 per treatment. If you are brave enough, do it on your own to make it cheaper. There are a lot of threads on this board that explains how to do it and what topical to use for aftercare .. if you are serious about your scar treatment, I suggest you go through all of them and decide on a proper regimen. Make sure that you are well-informed to take the best out of those posts because I tell you there are some folks that have done some crazy shit out of desperation. I myself have decided on using the Terproline ointment because some Dr. Chu from England uses it on his patients post needling. Having read so many positive posts on his practice, I am sold on it. Maybe it won't work wonders on me, but I get a peace of mind that it won't cause further damage. If I don't see much improvement with it in 6 months time, I will try Copper Peptides.
Believe it or not, I went thru each and every post in this Fraxel thread which is almost 240 pages long. I have also probably spent countless hours reading through posts and literature on dermarolling/skin needling. I have also tried TCA cross, but have stopped for two reasons. One that there is some risk of causing further scarring if not done properly. Second, the downtime with all the scabs is quite long time. For a working person like me, I can't afford to burn my precious vacation days holed up in my house. Anyways, just wanted to share my thoughts. I will try to post my pics by early next year hopefully with much improvements than I started out with.
May I know where you get the Terproline ointment? Is it OTC medicine or you need the doctor's prescription for it?
Based on my own experience (after 4 Fraxel-II treatments), I think I have about 25% improvement in my scars. I have posted my pics in this thread and you'll see that my scars are pretty severe in that I have lots of icepicks and box scars concentrated on my cheeks/forehead.
For those who are trying to decide on whether or not to go with Fraxel, my honest opinion is to first give dermaroller or skin needling a try over a course of 6 months. Now Dermaroller is not the cure all, but it is definitely more cost-effective than Fraxel. If you do enough research, the theory behind dermarolling/skin needling is the same as Fraxel-II. The difference is just how you do it. It cost me close to $3K for 4 full-face Fraxel treatments with quite a bit of downtime .. anywhere from 4-5 days for each treatment. The improvements I say is about 20% mostly on the cheeks. The scars on the forehead have not responded as much. The overall skin texture looks much better. Now if you were to do cost-benefit analysis, its definitely not worth it. Even if you were to get only 20-25% improvement from DermaRoller, why not opt for that than Fraxel. I chose Fraxel because I thought somehow a laser treatment must be superior to anything else and also that since it costs more, it must be more effective. But the more I have read on Dermarolling/Skin Needling lately, I couldn't have been further from the truth.
I believe professional Dermarolling costs anywhere from $400-500 per treatment. If you are brave enough, do it on your own to make it cheaper. There are a lot of threads on this board that explains how to do it and what topical to use for aftercare .. if you are serious about your scar treatment, I suggest you go through all of them and decide on a proper regimen. Make sure that you are well-informed to take the best out of those posts because I tell you there are some folks that have done some crazy shit out of desperation. I myself have decided on using the Terproline ointment because some Dr. Chu from England uses it on his patients post needling. Having read so many positive posts on his practice, I am sold on it. Maybe it won't work wonders on me, but I get a peace of mind that it won't cause further damage. If I don't see much improvement with it in 6 months time, I will try Copper Peptides.
Believe it or not, I went thru each and every post in this Fraxel thread which is almost 240 pages long. I have also probably spent countless hours reading through posts and literature on dermarolling/skin needling. I have also tried TCA cross, but have stopped for two reasons. One that there is some risk of causing further scarring if not done properly. Second, the downtime with all the scabs is quite long time. For a working person like me, I can't afford to burn my precious vacation days holed up in my house. Anyways, just wanted to share my thoughts. I will try to post my pics by early next year hopefully with much improvements than I started out with.
For those who are trying to decide on whether or not to go with Fraxel, my honest opinion is to first give dermaroller or skin needling a try over a course of 6 months. Now Dermaroller is not the cure all, but it is definitely more cost-effective than Fraxel. If you do enough research, the theory behind dermarolling/skin needling is the same as Fraxel-II. The difference is just how you do it. It cost me close to $3K for 4 full-face Fraxel treatments with quite a bit of downtime .. anywhere from 4-5 days for each treatment.I believe professional Dermarolling costs anywhere from $400-500 per treatment. If you are brave enough, do it on your own to make it cheaper. There are a lot of threads on this board that explains how to do it and what topical to use for aftercare .. if you are serious about your scar treatment, I suggest you go through all of them and decide on a proper
The Fraxels I'm doing now, Erbium Fraxel (3D), cost about US $300 per treatment for full face. This is as opposed to the new CO2 Fraxels which costs at least $1800 per treatment for full face. The same dermatologist that I go to also does Dermarolling - where you must buy the 2.0mm (what was recommended for me after my non-improvement with 1.5mm with another doc after 3 sessions and one year later). The 2.0 mm needle costs a ridiculous $400 alone, but they were willing to do a package deal where they would do 4 sessions of needling + 1 Fraxel for $1200 But I passed on the deal and opted for a series of Fraxels & topped with one or two full-face dermabrasion (CO2). If you think about it, for $1200, you can get 4 Fraxels and I bet in these bad economies, some docs are willing to give you a package deal. Of course I live in Asia where pricing can be quite different than US & Europe.
After doing my 1st Fraxel and almost 2 weeks later. I *can* definetely see my smaller scars/pits diminishing - not a whole lot - but something noticeable. One experienced doc with this particular model of Fraxel told me that Fraxel microswelling lasts about a week and after a week, you are pretty much looking at what your improvement would be. If this is the case, it is more than I ever got with 3 needling sessions. Of course, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this isn't the same temporary microswelling that I got with needling which went away after a month. But one thing that is different (than needling) for sure is that Fraxel gave me baby-smooth face to the touch, my complexion is whiter and more even-toned. I did not get these with needling.
As for theories for Fraxels & Needling - I think it all depends on which Fraxels you are looking at. Even the latest generation of non-CO2 Fraxels are quite different than ones that came out last year. Also, I believe the settings & skill of the practicioner is of great importance.
I think I should have thought more carefully about the needling theories. Both of them try to increase collagen production below the skin surface by activating (due to necrosis) certain reaction cascades. I mean the size of the pin is thousands times bigger than a beam of laser. I think they are two different things completely. For every pin prick into the skin, a laser has burned thousands more holes. Mathematically, it is no comparison. I think our cells would respond differently to a stimulus that is thousands of times larger than our receptors that are responsible for the chain reaction (that leads to skin-repair and collagen production). I think that lasers, can 'surgically' trigger more reactions than a 'blunt' force. Think how minute our cells are - a pin is many many times bigger than our cells. I also think that vaporizing cells gives a different response than puncture-induced ones. Maybe that is why I feel the effects are different. Don't get me wrong, I'm not endorsing Fraxel at all, if my results with Fraxel is not much different than needling, then all the differences I thought doesn't mean squat in real-world. Maybe the truth is that my scars just don't respond to anything period. I guess I'll know about 4-5 months from now.
I have read a few docs that would actually do a Dermarolling 1st and then immediately a Fraxel afterwards on top of the bloody face. They claim this gives a better synergistic effect than by either alone. I think this may have some merits.
I'm sure Dermarolling does work for some people, probably with shallow scars when compared to mine or else my doc wouldn't be offering it. But then again, only about 1/20 docs here offer this as an alternate treatment for improving scars. One can't really accuse the rest of trying to make $$$$ with expensive Fraxels because the needling practically cost nothing for them and here, they are charging almost the same as the expensive Fraxel machines. I mean if they are all out to make money, they would actually offer this, right?
Also, I remember last year, when I confronted a doc with MTS/Dermarolling, he rolled his eyes at me and said, you think this is effective?
I've a question I'm hoping someone here can answer:
Are the following setting the same?
Setting #1
50 mj TL 9 Passes 8
Here, the doctor does a set of 8 passes at coverage of approx 27% at a depth produced by 50mj.
Setting #2
50 mj TL 5 Passes 8
50 mj TL 4 Passes 8
Here, the doctor does the initial set of 8 passes at coverage of approx 15% at a depth produced by 50mj. Then the doctor does another set of 8 passes at coverage of approx 12 at a depth produced by 50mj. Total coverage is approx 27% at a depth produced by 50mj.
I think people are getting confused with all of the different Fraxel machines and their name.
Here is what I pulled from the Faxel site
http://www.fraxel.com/fraxelTreatments.aspx
FRAXEL TREATMENTS
A FAMILY OF TREATMENTS TO FIT YOUR LIFESTYLE
The Fraxel family of products has three laser treatments, all delivering remarkable results with fast recovery. We also have a post-treatment skincare regimen called the Fraxel Skin Ecology System. Click on the links below to learn more about each Fraxel treatment.
Fraxel re:finea treatment a for prevention and maintenance
The most gentle option, Fraxel re:fine treatment is a cosmetic procedure that treats minor skin damage, preventing the signs of aging so you can maintain a youthful look. What it treats: fine lines around the eyes, age spots/sunspots, pigment irregularities and uneven skin tone. Downtime: Almost none. Return to routine activities the very same day.
Fraxel re:storea treatment a for mild to severe skin damage
The original and most popular Fraxel treatment, Fraxel re:store treatment can resurface damaged skin and uncover the skin of your youth a all with minimal impact on your daily routine. What it treats: wrinkles around the eyes, acne scars, surgical scars, age spots/sunspots, melasma and Actinic Keratoses. Downtime: Return to regular activities the very next day.
Fraxel re:pairA treatment a surgery-like results for the most severe skin damage
The newest product in the Fraxel family, Fraxel re:pair treatment is a preemptive strike against a facelift. The treatment tightens skin and corrects severe damage. What it treats: wrinkles, irregular texture, age spots/sunspots, sun-induced redness. Downtime: Return to routine activities within a week.
I don't see much of positive responses in here anymore, but I am one of a few people who is happy with the five Fraxel sessions that I had received in 2008. I found this board in February 2008, read this entire thread and decided to give Fraxel Restore a shot. I wanted to wait at least 6 month after my 5th session to come back in here and report back the results/progress so that I do not mislead anyone (due to micro-swelling effects). I also wanted to wait for collagen to build up over time.
I will give the details in my later posts, but to summarize, I have observed about 35% improvements after five sessions. Was it enough for me to feel completely secure about the condition of my skin? No. But I feel so so so much better every time I see myself in a mirror now.
I made an appointment for my 6th today, and my new doctor is willing to treat me at the highest setting. With two or three more sessions at the highest setting, I will probably be happy enough about my skin.
One thing I learned after reading this entire thread back in Feb 2008 and before getting Fraxel was to be realistic and do not expect the results so soon. I think that could be the reason why I feel good about my 35% improvement- This is what I expected after 5 sessions and I've gotten what I wanted. =)
Some info
Race & Age: I'm an Asian female in early 30s.
Types of scar that I had: I had mostly icepick scars and boxed scars on my both cheeks.
Skin condition before Fraxel: I was clear and no longer had acne.
The Results: Surprisingly, I saw more improvements in icepick scars. Some of the shallow boxed scars have become shallower and softer in corners, but deep boxed scars have pretty much stayed as they are.
Post Fraxel Breakouts: I started to develop tons of whiteheads and milias during my sessions. They continued even after my 5th sessions, so my dermatologist put me on Retin-A. Though the first 3 weeks of being on Retin-A was a pure hell (lots of redness & peeling), almost all of my post Fraxel breakouts are gone now.
What I think you need to know about Fraxel if you're considering one: If you expect more than 50% improvements under five sessions, don't do it. If you don't want to experience or deal with post Fraxel breakouts, don't do it. If you want the immediate results, don't do it. If you are willing to treat your scars with time, patience, and money, maybe it's for you. It's not for everyone. That I know.
Pictures coming soon.
Very useful post Bellydance_me in moderating expectations. One has to be reasonable is expectations. 30-35% improvement is what seems to be the best one can expect from a set of Re:Store treatments. If one is aware of this and achieves it, then it's a success. If one expects the complete removal of all scars, then one will be disappointed.
It's heartening to read a post from someone who is pleased with the results. I am currently undergoing a set of 6 Fraxel Re:Store sessions. I agree that time and patience are needed. After my 6th session, I'll give it about 7 months to see the final improvements. I am considering another set of 6 sessions at the end of 2009.
I totally agree with bellydance and unbroken!! I do not regret doing the 5 Fraxels I did (I think it was 5 and not 6, it's been so long;) I do want to try it again but the money is an issue right now. So I am debating doing another round of the re:store or moving on and going wtih the big gun and trying the re:pair. I guess I will have to talk to my doctor about it.
2 years after my last Fraxel restore and I can defintly see an improvement but I still have work to be done. Sure its' a lot of time and money but I wear a lot less makeup and obsess a little less about my face. I'm 40 and with my skin getting older it shows up the remaining scars I have so I do need some kind of upkeep. Maintenance!
I do really wish it was cheaper! I would do more in a heartbeat!
I'll give it about 7 months to see the final improvements. I am considering another set of 6 sessions at the end of 2009.
Hello Unbroken. I believe it is an excellent idea to wait months to decide whether or not you need another round. For me, I started to notice real improvements after about three month post my 5th Fraxel. It's true when they say "collagen build over time". It really does!
jjp007-
Congrats on your improvement! Whatever you decide to do, I wish you nothing but success.