.jpeg)
Southern Skin and Wellness is located directly in the heart of the New Orleans CBD.
Neither choice is free. Stated both ways:
More collagen contraction from heat, so more tightening in a single session. Good control of bleeding. A long clinical track record.
Roughly one to two weeks before you are presentable, redness that can persist well beyond that, and a materially higher risk of pigment change afterwards — particularly in Fitzpatrick III and above, which is a large share of this city.
Days rather than a fortnight, far less lasting redness, and safety well down the Fitzpatrick scale.
Less thermal tightening. Which is the reason the next section exists.
Three wavelengths do almost all ablative resurfacing. They are not interchangeable.
Absorbed by water roughly fifteen times less strongly than erbium. The energy reaches further and leaves a zone of heated, coagulated tissue beneath the surface it removes. That heat contracts collagen, which is a real benefit, and it is also the reason recovery runs long.
Sits at the peak of water absorption. Removes tissue in a far thinner layer with a fraction of the residual heat. Faster healing, less lasting redness, and a considerably lower risk of pigment change afterwards.
The same water peak and, for practical purposes, the same absorption. What differs is delivery: through a fiber, which allows pulse shapes and spot geometries the others cannot produce.
Erbium's old limitation was laxity. Tightening was a thermal effect, and erbium deliberately leaves very little heat behind, so it gave up that benefit in exchange for its safety.
Coring removes that trade. Rather than shrinking tissue with heat, narrow full-thickness columns of skin are taken out entirely. As each column heals, the surrounding tissue draws together. Laxity is addressed by removing tissue instead of heating it — mechanically, which is closer to how surgery works than to how a heat-based device works.
So the choice is no longer safety or tightening. Dr. Lindley works in erbium because it now offers both, and because in this climate, across this range of skin tones, the pigment risk that travels with heat is not a small consideration.
