The Pros and Cons of Removing Stretch Marks with Laser

Stretch marks are linear scars in the skin that form where the underlying skin has atrophied. Usually following rapid changes in the layers of fat or muscle lying below the skin, stretch marks occur during pregnancy, breastfeeding, the adolescent growth spurt during puberty, rapid muscle growth, rapid muscle deterioration, and treatment of skin diseases with steroids.

Stretch marks are notoriously difficult to treat, but dermatologists often are able to provide fast – and expensive – results with laser treatment. Laser stretch mark removal is performed at the doctor's office with a pulsed dye laser at the dermatologist's office every four to six weeks. Laser stretch mark removal, however, is not for everyone. Here are the major pros and cons.

Reasons to have laser stretch mark removal include:

• Much less time consuming than at-home treatments
• About 90 per cent successful when used on the right skin types
• Very useful for treating striae rubra, red stretch marks only recently formed

Reasons not to have laser stretch mark removal treatments include:

• Much more expensive than creams, microdermabrasion, or other at-home therapies
• Can leave permanent pigmentation on dark brown or black skin
• Not very useful for treating striae alba, white stretch marks that formed months or years before treatment
• Unusual sensitivity to pain, although most people say the procedure is unpleasant but not especially painful

People who have rich, dark skin tones usually should not try laser treatments of any kind. The risk of permanent pigmentation is just too great. For them, an alternative to laser treatment, also provided by the dermatologist, is intense pulsed light.

Not a laser light, intense pulsed light is visible light, but very high intensity. Oddly enough, this method is used with considerable success to treat age spots caused by excessive sun exposure, and also stimulates the growth of collagen to fill in stretch marks. Intense UV-B light, the same wavelengths of light that cause sunburn and skin cancer, can be used in small doses every few weeks to treat striae alba, the white stretch marks that do not usually respond to laser treatment.

The sooner treatment begins, the better the results. Nearly all stretch marks, however, fade with time, over a period of 5 to 10 years, even without treatment. If you don't want to wait 5 to 10 years to be able to wear a bathing suit, perhaps the US $1,000 to $5,000 laser stretch mark removal cost will not deter you from seeing your dermatologist for stretch mark removal. If a dermatologist is able to treat your stretch marks in just one or two visits, you may actually spend less for laser treatment than for microdermabrasion or the most expensive stretch mark creams.