I just posted a horrific story from a reader:
http://www.hairfacts.com/medpubs/lasergen/laser-hair-removal.html
She is obviously very traumatized, but we are doing what we can to find her medical and legal assistance to deal with the damage.
Stories like these are why it is critical to choose a qualified practitioner.
Of course my sympathies are with her getting better. I can imagine how she must feel, and hopefully it won’t all scar. But I just wonder what kind of laser did that and what did the practitioner have the settings on. It must have been painful during treatment. Burns like that are serious, i wonder if she was under anesthetic and didn’t feel it until too late.
Mantaray
ouch that’s scary. I hope things like this persuage people to do more research before jumping into laser hair removal.
That picture is horrific. I have had minute burn marks from hair that is long and burns against the skin…gone in 3 days max. I cannot believe how bad those burns are. Yes, research, and reputations of laser places are worth the time you invest.
This makes me wonder how many other pictures of clients who have been burned, are out there. I echo Mantaray’s questions on this one, plus one more: all that surface area damage for just a few little hairs? Hopefully the other side of her face wasn’t affected. Yeah, do keep us posted. So, so sorry for your suffering. You have the right person (Andrea) on your side to help you through this.
I can see tightening of the noose here as to who can and cannot wield a laser in the future.
I don’t quite understand how this can happen. I mean wouldn’t the teach be able to see the burning occuring? The burns seem to be fairly deep. Or does it only show up after the treatment?
To me I don’t understand how something like this can happen. I hope this person gets their justice.
This is what people like myself have been saying all along, there are to many variables, and one doesn’t know how the treatment will turn out until it is done. The tech honestly would not have known this was going to happen. There would have been no clues until the proceedure was over.
When an electrologist has the wrong setting, any moderately competent practitioner realizes this after a hair or three, and the skin need only heal up those few overtreated follicles. In Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation the tech must do his or her best to guess what is correct treatment for that person, and treating that person’s skin, only to hope for the best.
This is why so many electrologists like Fino Gior, Mike Bono, Harvey Grove, and I ditched the idea of intergrating LASER into our practices. Some people on that short list even lost money on having tried LASER, above and beyond even the training (equipment and customer refunds for example).
You have to ask her if she was under medication for acne(roaccutan), or recently had any treatment with retinol or chemical peel. Anyway the burns are quite big and the practitioner should have noticed it since the first hit and stop.
I mean clearly it would have had too been noticable pretty much straight away, I mean they are deep. Her skin could not have looked normal after a few zaps.
I don’t quite understand how this can happen. I mean wouldn’t the teach be able to see the burning occuring? The burns seem to be fairly deep. Or does it only show up after the treatment?
To me I don’t understand how something like this can happen. I hope this person gets their justice.
When it burns that bad, you should be able to tell something is wrong within a few minutes. This is one reason not to use numbing cream. When in doubt, get a test spot first. I would like to know what laser did this. It is probably an alexandrite or maybe even a ruby laser.
RJC2001
I don’t mean to sound suspicious, but I still can’t understand how all this surface damage happens to someone that only wanted a few hairs lased?
Dee
I agree…going over that entire area would mean there was hair all over that area??
She appears to have light skin and light hair, so my guess is that the setting were turned up and her skin couldn’t take it. People feel pain differently, so she may have just thought it was supposed to hurt.
I’ll get more details as they become available. She was pretty upset in her earlier emails, and she says she is very embarrassed and depressed.
I think my last post on this didn’t show up or became lost. This is serious burning. This was way up in the high range, or she may have had freckles or moles that absorbed too much energy. As someone who went through medical school, I can tell you, this level of pain is felt immediately. It would be nice to hear from her, her experience would be a valuable lesson to those seeking LHR. This is a rarity and even my laser technician wants to know about this, the conditions it happened under, and were anesthetics were used.
LHR is a new rapid method that is used by 1.5 million people. It’s rapidly growing and I know it works first hand. It will render older, slower methods of hair removal obsolete. But like a car or a power tool, in incompetent hands, it’s dangerous like anything else. Research, research, research.
Mantaray.
Andrea,
Since she had this proceedure in September (no date), I’m wondering if she would be willing to submit another picture for hairtell???
I have encouraged her to get a lawyer, so as soon as she does and she has the OK, I will get additional information. I don’t want anything out there that might jeopardize her case.
I wonder how practitioners like this actually pass all their requirements.
There should be legal requirements for way better tranining for practitioners than a couple of weekend afternoons at the laser school in the mall. For godsakes, they’re handling expensive and clearly potentially harmful medical equipment.
Andrea, can you at least tell us if she used any anesthetic? If she did, I don’t think I’ll be using anymore for my treatments