Mottled skin tone or rough and lined skin?
Posted in Dermatology on September 24, 2010
If you are fair, have mottled skin tone, rough, or lined skin on your face you may have severe actinic damage. If you are fair and lived in a sunny climate, you are also at risk for actinic damage. If you are a red-head, or strawberry blond you are at risk as well. If you have already had a skin cancer, then that is already proof that you have significant chromosomal damage from the sun.
Severe actinic damage (sun damage) occurs when chromosomal injury in the epidermis occurs from extensive ultraviolet (UV) exposure. These injured cells are precursors to skin cancer and need to be removed in order to have healthy skin and decrease the chance of skin cancer in the future. I recommend that traditional CO2 laser resurfacing be performed to eliminate most of the injured cells. By lasering, the epidermis is "re-grown" by recruiting cells that have been living, deep within the pore, outside the reach of UV radiation. These deep epidermal cells have only a fraction of the chromosomal damage that the surface epidermal cells have. The deep epidermal cells become the new surface cells after healing and are far more healthy and much less likely to develop skin cancer. In addition to less skin cancer, CO2 laser resurfacing tightens and smoothes the skin significantly, more than any other type of procedure- it is considered the gold standard for skin tightening.
Sincerely,
Julie Voss, MD