Primary Effects: Thermal-Related Toxicity

In general, nonablative laser treatments are targeting melanin for hair removal and pigmen­tary lesions, oxyhemaglobin for vascular lesions, and extrinsic chromophores, that is, ink for tattoo removal. For the group of devices discussed, namely ruby, alexandrite, diode, Nd:YAG and IPL, thermal-related skin damage is fluence – or dose-dependent. Thus, as stated by Gold­berg [107] for lasers used in hair removal, “… the common theme to almost all complications is too much laser or light source thermally delivered damage to the skin”. As such, the fre­quency and magnitude of thermal-related adverse events depends on the condition being treated which will, in turn, dictate the fluence, wavelength, and frequency of exposure.