Are you suffering from skin problems and are searching for ways to look better? Thanks to modern technology, lasers can now treat skin care problems such as pigmentation, birthmarks and wrinkles. Find out more about how a ray of light can change your life from this presentation by The Victorian Cosmetic Institute.

1. Dr. Gavin Chan: How a Ray of Light Changed My Life - VCI – Beautiful You Expo

2. My name is Gavin Chan, I'm from the Victorian Cosmetic Institute and today I’ll be talking about how a ray of light can change your life.

3. Imagine taking a single wavelength of light, amplifying it and then focusing on some skin, and imparting changes on the skin, which make a huge, dramatic difference in the way the skin appears. This in turn, makes a huge change to how people perceive you and also how you feel from within and how confident you are in your skin.
Today, I’ll be talking about that topic which is lasers. Lasers are essentially a single wavelength of light. Lasers can make dramatic changes to your skin and I'll put together a few cases today illustrating this.

4. I first got into lasers about 10 years ago. I’ll tell you a bit about my journey. I started off with a single laser. I bought it at a conference, a cosmetic and laser conference run like this one and it cost a hundred and eighty thousand dollars at that time. The laser did virtually one thing, which was it treated blood vessels. So it was a laser which was highly attracted to oxyhaemoglobin which is present in the blood and what it could do is shut down blood vessels.

5. Now here is the man who came to see me, and this fellow was rather unfortunate. He only had one arm and everyone thought he was an alcoholic because he had a red face, but he actually didn't drink really much at all. He has a condition called rosacea which is quite a common condition affecting a lot of our population. The type of rosacea he had, were a lot of broken capillaries and facial capillaries. So we treated him with our laser that I had, my first laser and this was the result.

7. Afterwards, he was in here for a second treatment but you can see there is a dramatic difference between the first and second photos. This changed the way people perceived him. They didn’t think he was an alcoholic anymore and they thought he had better skin obviously.
Here's another interesting case, a young guy with a port-wine stain. A port-wine stain is a congenital birthmark that afflicts quite a number of people in our population, especially on the face.

9. Now this poor kid, when he was young, he didn't have any photos taken of him. Usually when you're a little kid you have multiple photos taken of you. He showed me one photo. I asked him to show me a photo of when he was young, I wanted to see what his port-wine stain was like. He showed me one photo of himself. I think he was angry, so his Dad said, I'll take a photo of you if you don't stop having a temper tantrum. He's got this photo of him throwing a temper tantrum when he was three years old.

10. Anyhow we used the same laser on him the vascular laser, the Gemini laser and that cleared a lot of his port-wine stains. You can see a huge difference between the first and second photos. There were multiple treatments involved in this and we didn’t ever get it down to nothing. The nature of most port- wine stains, is that it will actually not be able to be fully treatable, but nonetheless this made a big difference for him. He had a huge improvement in his confidence because his appearance was less dramatic.

11. So the laser bug bit me and I went on to purchase more lasers. Lasers are very specific in their use. One laser will be used for blood vessels as you've seen and then another laser may be used for pigmentation or other skin problems.
I make two analogies, one for men and one for women. For men, I might say it’s like having lots of different lenses for your camera and they can relate to that. For women, it’s like saying you know, you have to have multiple pairs of shoes. You can't just have one pair of shoes, because you can't do everything, in runners. You have to have high heels, you have to have

12. runners, you have to have all sorts of shoes and just some for everyday use. So lasers are a bit like that. Each laser does a specific job on the skin.
Now in this case, we have a demonstration of a ruby laser. This lady I actually met in the park, walking my dog. I watched her walk by quite a few times then I told her what I did. Then she said "What do you think, can you fix up this brown spot for me?" She actually had this for twenty years and even with makeup on, you weren’t really able to cover it up.

13. So we did one treatment, and within 10 minutes, this spot was in the process of being removed. After a week, you have this appearance. So she went on to have further treatment of some other brown spots and some further treatment of the remainder of that brown spot. You can see a huge difference, and this lady no longer has to worry about putting on makeup everyday.
Another example, an Asian patient, this lady couldn't cover up her face even with stage makeup, she couldn't cover up these dots. So we erased them using a pigment laser again and you

14. can see a dramatic difference in her skin. She could just put on light makeup now and get away with covering all the spots.
So my laser obsession kept going on and on, I kept buying more and more lasers, the laser bug really hit. I went and bought some different lasers. Some lasers have different properties. Some lasers are able to fire laser pulses at a very, very short interval of time. So we're talking in the order of one billionth of a second. These lasers can break down even things like tattoo ink.

15. We have a patient here who has an unfortunate tattoo across his forehead and this has stopped him from doing virtually anything. He had no job, he couldn't go anywhere without people making a serious judgment about him. Actually this case came to me as a pro bono case. I was asked to do this one at no charge and I did oblige because he couldn't afford to do it at that time and we ended up about doing six treatments on him and the result was this. So it virtually disappeared.

17. The lasers used was a Q-Switch Nd:Yag Laser which basically is attracted to the pigmenting. The laser is able to break down those pigments into such small particles that the body can them take away. Normally tattoos stay there because they're too big for the immune system to take away. So once they're broken down, they’re fine.
Now we move on to another laser. This is an interesting case here of a fellow who has had this big nose. It got bigger and bigger as time went by. He had an unfortunate situation where his wife passed hadn't had time and things got away and he

19. just let it go. He said he used to go to shopping malls and little kids used to be scared of him. He said he used to shake his nose at them and scare them off.
He's a nice fellow actually. Again, with this sort of nose, there's lot of association with alcoholism and other problems and really that’s not the case here. This is a complication of rosacea which is a skin condition. So I used another laser called a CO2 laser or carbon dioxide laser. This laser is attracted to the water in the skin. We were able to shave down the nose back to this level here so he looked much more

20. normal than the previous picture. The CO2 has to be one of my favorite lasers because you really can do so much with it in terms of skin rejuvenation.
This is Margaret, one of our nurses and she's a lovely lady, I work with her quite a lot. Every week in the operating theatre I stand opposite her. She's a lovely lady with a heart of gold, but people used to think she was tired or angry at them. At times that could be true. But she's got this very interesting expression she does with her one eyebrow where she can look at you and raise one eyebrow and it just sees right

22. through you. If she wants to make you uncomfortable she can do that.
One day, whilst I was operating opposite her I said to her, "Look Margaret, we’ve really got to do something with your skin". Of course she gave me the eyebrow and I was slightly uncomfortable. I said, "We’ve got to do a laser resurfacing for you". I planted the seed and I kept talking to her for days, and I think months and eventually I talked her around to doing it.

23. So we do a carbon dioxide laser resurfacing. The carbon dioxide laser is able to remove wrinkles by vaporizing a very fine layer of skin as well as tightening the skin through shrinkage. The skin basically shrinks through the thermal energy. This is her before and after; now, what a difference eh? You can see there are far fewer wrinkles, pigmentation is improved also. We just basically took that top layer of old skin off and regenerated her skin. One of the anesthetists she works with, who had been working with her for twenty years didn't recognize her. He said, "Oh, that's you Margaret." He didn't recognize her after the treatment.

25. Here's another example of a lady who has had carbon dioxide laser resurfacing. You can also remove little moles by focusing on the mole and shaving it down to the level of the skin, but certainly there's a lot of skin tightening around the eyes and a lot of reduction in upper lip lines.

27. Now we have a final case here. Now, we actually have the after shot here, she's right in front of me, so would you like to come to the stage Alana? This is Alana, give her a hand. I thought, the best after shot ever. This was her. Alana sent me this photo, not long after she initially contacted me by email. She asked me, do you do laser resurfacing? I said yes. She's from Mildura, so I said, send me some photos and this is what she sent me. You weren't too happy about those photos.

29. Dr. Chan: What did you title them? You said...
Alana: Ugly.
Dr. Chan: She titled them 'ugly'. That was the folder that she put them in. She was really worried about her skin and you've had this since... how old were you when this first started?
Alana: It started when I was around thirty and just got worse and worse, mainly sun damage. I've been to three plastic surgeons, they wouldn't touch me because it was just too, too many wrinkles.

31. Dr. Chan: So, in essence, a face lift or a surgical intervention is not the ideal procedure for this sort of skin. What needs to be done is a resurfacing of the skin. So poor Alana went through this. She had the procedure, we put her through sedation, so it was relatively comfortable, for the procedure. We injected a lot of local anesthetic into her face, and now I have to pre-warn you that these next pictures are going to be quite graphic. This is her journey afterwards. This is before, this is immediately after the procedure, you can see there's little bit of bleeding, her face is very swollen from the local anesthetic. How did that feel at that stage, was that painful?

33. Alana: Um, no. I had no pain. No.
Dr. Chan: And it gets worse, Day 2, you could see quite a lot of crusting and bleeding. Now Vaseline is applied to the face everyday, you get pretty sick of Vaseline after a while. So at this point, how did it feel? How did your face feel at this point?
Alana: I had no pain. I just felt normal. There was nothing.
Member of the audience: Were you scared?
Dr. Chan: Were you scared?

35. Alana: (Shook her head)
Dr. Chan: I guess this is Day 3 and Day 5, and Day 6 and 7 and I think 8 days on, 9 days, 11 and 18 days. So we've gone from this to this, which is quite a nice change, and here she is. Give her a hand.
Audience: (Applause)
Dr. Chan: Well now, how do you feel after your procedure? How do you feel within yourself?

40. Alana: Oh heaps better. People are noticing a difference. I feel better about myself. Yeah, I just yeah, completely different.
Dr. Chan: Did many people made any remarks or comments?
Alana: Yep. A lot of people say that they can see that I look different but they can't put their finger on what it is. And they say that I look refreshed.
Dr. Chan: So you don't look overdone, like plastic surgery.

41. Alana: No.
Dr. Chan: Okay, so thank you Alana for coming all the way from Mildura to be part of this talk. I hope it’s made a nice difference for you, in your life.
Alana: It has.
Dr. Chan: And I think, that's what really gives us a bit of a buzz, when we have patients like Alana who are not only very nice but who have great results. You know it gives us a bit of a buzz that we've looked after you and helped to make a

42. difference in your life. Thank you.
Question time. Do you have questions?
Dr. Chan: Alana stayed in Melbourne for one week. We see her everyday after the procedure to check on her, to make sure there are no signs of infection, or any issues. She had an uncomplicated course, there were no side effects or complications with her treatment.
It does take a good one week to get over the majority of it, and up to a month to two months to get over the redness and the swelling. How far out are you now again? It’s about six

43. weeks out. So the improvements continue for six to twelve months afterwards as the collagen remodels. From other patients as well as Alana, I’d say the experience is not painful. It’s slightly itchy and uncomfortable, and you look terrible, you look really terrible, that's the main issue for people.
Pain wise is not bad, at worse it feels like a bit of sunburn but you have to be secluded at home, you can't really go out and do your shopping or anything. You have to get all of your shopping and videos and everything done before, borrow your videos and do your grocery shopping and just stay at home for a week. So you did very well. Vaseline gets in your hair and everything, but it’s a very good procedure. In terms of

44. resurfacing, this is the gold standard. So there's nothing really that surpasses this.
The only other thing is, it’s only available for people with fairer skin types. So people with olive skin or Asians, darker skin types, cannot have the procedure. It's only for fairer skin types.
Any other questions? Thank you for listening, and good to have all of you. Yes, come visit our stand, it's around the corner there. We’ll just do a plug there for our stand. I think we have some offers as well so come by. Otherwise, thank you for coming to listen to me.

45. Visit our general information page to learn more about the different kinds of lasers used in skin treatment.