Each day I hear thing like this from patients:
- “I had my eyes done a few years ago, Dr. Key.”
- “Just four or five years ago, I had a facelift.”
These patients that I am meeting for the first time will often add, “Things looked good in the beginning but now they are, well, fading way. The results are hard to see today.”
How can this be, patient after patient? The answer is simply that the results from surgery can’t last forever. Most of the time, results are maintained 4 to 5 years.
So what do patients want? Why are they coming to me, a dermatologist in Portland who specializes in laser medicine, particularly if over half of them have already had cosmetic surgery, and the other half has never wanted to go so far as choosing surgery?
The reality is that laser medicine is not just an alternative to plastic surgery, it is really quite a different choice. Laser medicine today offers – and I truly mean this – the choice to heal aging. How can laser medicine heal aging? Lasers, as they interact with the skin, are raising the biology of that skin to a higher level of well-being, a higher level of healthiness. The reason your skin looks a lot better, the reason your skin is tighter, the reason you no longer look “tired” or as old and have a lot more energy shining through, is that laser treatments (not from the local spa or the drop-in-at-the-mall) are effective at reversing signs of aging.