• Question: Has the skin laser treatment ever gone wrong and injured a patient?

    Asked by chemistry654 to Mike, Pip, Tianfu, Tim, Tom on 22 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Tom Lister

      Tom Lister answered on 22 Jun 2012:

      Great question! The answer, of course, is yes!

      To start with, some of the treatments are quite painful when they are done correctly, so our intention is to injure our patients (we do offer plenty of sympathy, or anaesthetic if it really is going to hurt).

      I guess the worst thing I have known to happen is turning the laser up too high. This has happened a couple of times, but we always notice after a couple of shots (each about the size of a 5p coin) so the consequence isn’t so bad – sometimes the treatment works better than it would have done!

      We always tell people there is about a 1% risk of something going wrong – ranging from darkening or lightening of the treated area for a few months, through to leaving a scar. I think in reality the risk is much lower, but it’s good to be conservative.

    • Photo: Philippa Bird

      Philippa Bird answered on 25 Jun 2012:

      Sounds scary! Probably worth the risk though.

    • Photo: Tim Stephens

      Tim Stephens answered on 25 Jun 2012:

      Yikes. One for Tom!

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