Immediately after treatment:
- Immediately after treatment, the skin will look swollen with red dots in the locations that were treated with the laser.
- Your doctor may instruct you to cover the treated areas with a moisturizing cream or ointment. Wound dressings are usually not necessary, but your doctor may recommend that you apply cold compresses for pain relief.
- After treatment, it is important to avoid sun exposure and apply sunscreen for a couple of weeks.
Days and weeks after treatment:
- Your skin will continue to be red and swollen for 4 to 10 days after treatment with an ablative fractional laser with corticosteroids.
- Oozing from the wounds can last for up to 5 days after the procedure.
- You can experience some degree of itching 4 to 6 days after the treatment.
Longer term:
- There is usually no long-term recovery process after treatment with an ablative fractional laser with corticosteroids.
- In rare cases, thinning of the skin can occur after the treatment and may take 6 months or more to disappear.
- It is important to use sunscreen whenever the skin is exposed to the sun until you are completely finished with all of your treatment sessions and your skin has healed from your final treatment session, meaning that no pink, newly formed skin is visible anymore.
- Unfortunately, raised and keloid scars can sometimes recur (come back) after treatment. Keloid scars are particularly likely to recur.