I have had cynosure elite on my beard, chest and genital area. The seesion was at 18j. One session on beard/chest and one session on abdomen/genital. The nurse missed patches,the main issue being my beard where I have lines and small patches of hair on my neck.
When i consulted nurse about getting missed bits redone, i.e. a touchup, she claimed that she has to wait at least 4 weeks before using the laser on the skin again. Her solution is to move up next appointment and do the entire beard area on a lower setting. Plus another 150 euro.If anyone can provide info to say its safe to do touchups, as I need to deal with clinic or find a new one. Any help greatly appreciated
Touchups are safe especially since you pretty much need to wait for the hair to shed to see what needs to be touched up. That would be 3 weeks minimum anyway. Question though, do you have actual spots that are missed or do you just have say not 100% shedding as in it’s even shedding but not all hairs?
Thanks for the reply
I have a few spots and couple of lines. I have had 100% shedding on any area treated. I am white Irish with dark hair, so i should be a perfect candidate for laser. When I phoned the nurse initially did agree to do touchup, she put me on hold to arrange, she came back with a completely different attitude saying it was unsafe to laser within 4 weeks. Basically giving this as a reason to not do touch up. I need proof that it is safe, so that I can go to them with these facts and get my touchups done
You can get treated as often as you wish, without worrying about safety on your skin as long as the settings are correct.
Are there any medical trial results or papers on this. I need evidence so I can go back to the clinic, I want to be armed with all the information before I go back as they are just going to try and fob me off with move up my next appointment and ask for 150euro
When was your treatment? How long has it been? You need to give it 3 weeks for shedding to occur. Whatever hasn’t shed at that point or is growing as usual was likely missed. You don’t mention the spot size or pulse width used btw, which are important.
Overlapping properly is what makes them not miss spots. If more than 10% or so of hair was missed, I would ask that the touchup be free. You shouldn’t have to pay to touchup their slopping job. 10% and less is ok and not a huge deal.
Its 3 weeks since the treatment. Shedding had completed about 5 days ago. The nurse did not overlap for fear of putting too much heat into the skin. I have asked for a touch up but was told that they couldn’t laser the same skin within 4 weeks. They advised me that they could move up my next appointment and do my entire beard at a lower setting. The laser settings on my beard were 18joules the other settings I do not know.
You could get in touch with Cynosure - I have a contact if that helps - and ask them about the protocol. Armed with that, they would have no excuse.
I am afraid what they are saying is just not true and sounds like an excuse for getting out of the tidy up
I am in UK BTW
If she didn’t overlap then she doesn’t sound like she knows what she’s doing…
Thanks for all the info. Guidance i would be grateful if you could pass on those details for cynosure. Information is power. The nurse is only following clinic procedure, she is actually a very nice person so I dont blame her, at this stage I want to organize a meeting with the Doctor running the clinic. They have broken promises and lied to me. With the help of the people on this site I hope to inform him how a reputable laser clinic operates. If they dont change their procedures they will not only loose my custom but my wife and her friends custom aswell. What can I say we are hairy people
The reason they want to move up your appt is so that you would pay them for this “touchup”. That would be a “treatment”, not a touchup to fix their error. There is a difference. You shouldn’t have to pay for them to fix something they didn’t do correctly.
Overlapping is absolutely necessary, especially on a male face, if you don’t want to end up with patchy results. I would consider finding a clinic that is more knowledgeable for this area especially.
18J alone doesn’t tell us much. Apogee Elite is both an alex and Yag in one machine. We don’t know which was used. Also, there is a spot size and pulse width setting involved. Both are important to judge overall strentgh of settings.
It was the alex that they used. The pain was pretty unbearable, but thats because i have mountain man hair with tree roots on my face. The chest was also very painful, I am skinny. The genital and anal area were not painful at all. If I move clinic I will go with candela gentlelase, is the pain higher without having the cool air system that elite has. I had a patch test done with gentlelase 25joules again only details I asked, results were amazing. I chose the elite for us as pain is a factor
Pain is similar. It should be painful if the settings are good. If you can’t handle it, you should use a numbing cream and/or icing, not decrease settings.
GentleLASE also has cooling called cryogen. It’s just a different type of cooling.
25J on what spot size? It’s best to use the max spot size, which is 18mm and on that spot size max is 20J. So if they used 25J, they must have dropped the spot size to 15mm or lower.
Went to a different clinic and they told me that if i would have came to them from the start that they would have treated me, but they are not prepared to take on someone elses botched job.
So I have to return to the original clinic. I am going to try and organise a meeting with the owner of the clinic and inform him of my treatment so far and how unhappy I am about my treatment.
I have contacted cynosure to try and get treatment protocols but have had no response so far.
Any advice on how to talk to owner of clinic would be greatly appreciated.
That’s ridiculous, where on earth are you?? So confused lol, what difference does it make to them whether they treat you after someone else? If you hadn’t even told them you went somewhere else then let all your hair grow back they wouldn’t even know, not after just 1 treatment. If the clinic doesn’t want to overlap on your face then either they don’t know what they’re doing, or they have no confidence/experience in treating a male’s face and are scared of burning you. Not sure what else to tell you…
Well, one option is to print out this thread and bring it with you. If they don’t want to treat you properly, demand your money back.