How To Get Younger Looking Skin

1st March 2023 by PHI Clinic

To look at how to provide younger looking skin, you first have to understand what younger looking skin means. Younger looking skin is essentially the absence of key ageing indicators such as fine lines and wrinkles, sun spots or sun damage, clear skin tone and texture and the absence of large pores. Its without these factors that the skin has a fresh and clear texture and tone and gives the appearance of younger looking skin, a treatment provided by with UltraClear.

What is UltraClear?

“UltraClear is a novel new device that at its ‘most basic’ is a laser that can ablate the skin. Ablation is the act of removing small parts of the skin.Traditionally, we currently use full ablation, that’s when all the top layer of the skin is removed. Now that gives you amazing results, but also it can lead to longer downtime and a long list of side effects. A really big breakthrough was fractional laser, this is where we only treat parts of the skin and leave small parts of the skin untreated. That means we heal much quicker, but of course, the results aren’t as good.

Up until now, we’ve had two types of laser for ablation; CO2 laser and the Erbium YAG, so UltraClear is a brand new wavelength which is a fibre laser, and it’s been developed so that it is far more comfortable for the patient. It’s the first laser that’s been FDA approved for treatment in all skin types.” – Dr Tapan Patel

What Does UltraClear Treat?

“There’s a number of things that we can treat with UltraClear. When I look at the skin, the holy grail for me is clear, radiant skin. There’s two things that I look at, tone and texture. Texture is how even the surface of the skin is and tone is how even the colour is, from the hairline down to the chin. Two things disrupt the tone; redness and pigment or brown patches.

Now we deal with redness with a different set of lasers, but UltraClear can be used to address pigmentation. Now not all pigmentation can be addressed with a laser, but certainly pigmentation induced by sun damage reacts very well to UltraClear. At the same time, we can use a deeper setting to improve the texture, particularly in people who have deep lines and wrinkles and scars. Our most popular application is when we combine the two, so we do a superficial and a deep treatment in the same path, and therefore, we can improve not only the tone, but the texture as well.” – Dr Tapan Patel

What's Involved In An UltraClear Treatment?

“We offer patients a consultation first to discuss, (we never treat on the same day as we allow the patients time to reflect on their proposed plan). When they come in on the day, we will finish the paperwork and consent forms and move onto some photography. After that, we will use some local anaesthetic numbing cream if required. At the lighter settings, the UltraClear is so comfortable that many people will have the treatment with no numbing cream at all. Now to someone like me with all the years I’ve been doing laser, that really is quite incredible. And then after that, we will proceed to the treatment.

The treatment will use settings that have been discussed with the patient, depending on how their desired downtime period. Once treatment has finished, we cool them off, apply some ointment to the face, and then send you home. Typically, we will follow up every day, by asking patients to send us photos. We will finish by scheduling a review to assess the impact of treatment.” – Dr Tapan Patel

Why UltraClear?

“I’m a real fan of laser resurfacing, but traditionally, the treatments I use are quite aggressive. Although they give me great results, not everyone is willing to put up with the discomfort, and downtime that can sometimes be associated with these treatments. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still be doing all my CO2 resurfacing but UltraClear opens up the option for patients who mainly want one or two days downtime and we can do a really light application for those patients. But at the other end of the spectrum, we may have patients who are prone to pigmentation or darker skin types who wouldn’t be appropriate for CO2 resurfacing but for the first time, they now have a treatment option for their scarring.” – Dr Tapan Patel