I recently came across an interesting article related to plastic surgery (no, not plastic surgery financing).  It is about using light to diagnose skin cancers.  Here is a summary—

“The standard way physicians do a diagnosis now is to cut out a mole and look at a slice of it with a microscope,” said Warren Warren, the James B. Duke Professor of chemistry, radiology and biomedical engineering, and director of Duke’s new Center for Molecular and Biomedical Imaging. “What we’re trying to do is find cancer signals they can get to without having to cut out the mole.

“This is the first approach that can target molecules like hemoglobin and melanin and get microscopic resolution images the equivalent of what a doctor would see if he or she were able to slice down to that particular point,” Warren said.

The distributions of hemoglobin, a component of ruddy blood cells, and melanin, a skin pigment, serve as early warning signs for skin cancer growth. But because skin scatters light strongly, simple microscopes cannot be used to locate those molecules except right at the surface. Although laser methods have been developed to probe deeper down for some other molecules that can be made to glow, both melanin and hemoglobin remain dark and inaccessible using those methods.

Warren’s group has now developed a technology for coaxing both hemoglobin and melanin inside questionable skin moles to emit light by exciting them with highly controlled laser pulses.

The innovation uses a delicate interplay between two laser beams, each emitting a different color of light. To keep the skin from overheating in the process, the lasers must also be able to pulse on for only femtoseconds — a thousand trillionths of a second — at a time.

The glow of the hemoglobin- and melanin-bearing structures can be magnified by a microscope outside the skin and manipulated by computers to create cellular-scale images. The noninvasive technique could enable doctors to see as much as a millimeter below the skin’s surface — more than enough for diagnosis, Warren said.

In the future these techniques might be useful for other implications, such as wilean Beverly Hills cosmetic surgery.

Now that summer is here, we get many questions about refreshing skin.  We mostly tell our Los Angeles cosmetic surgery patients, “Sunscreen, Sunscreen, Sunscreen.”  There is nothing more important to youthful skin than protecting it from the harsh rays of the sun.  This is especially so here in Southern California.

A recent scientific study looked at some of the common skincare treatments and how they help improve the appearance of skin.  The article is interesting.  Here is a summary—

The researchers report an emerging picture of collagen collapse and possible renewal, based on more than a decade of studies, in the May issue of Archives of Dermatology.

The article draws on dozens of studies since the early 1990s, conducted primarily by U-M dermatologists, to explain why three types of available skin treatments are effective: topical retinoic acid, carbon dioxide laser resurfacing and injections of cross-linked hyaluronic acid.

These treatments all improve the skin’s appearance – and its ability to resist bruises and tears – by stimulating new collagen. Collagen is a key supporting substance, plentiful in young skin, that’s produced in the sub-surface layer of skin known as the dermis. The U-M findings show that the breakdown of the dermis’ firm, youthful structure is a very important factor in skin aging – a much more straightforward thing to fix than genetic factors that others theorize may be involved.

Good skin appeals to everyone, even those coming to our office for unrelated procedures such as liposuction.