Pulsed dye laser for treatment of psoriasis, hypertrophic burn scars, and laryngeal papillomatosis

The 585 nm, 450 μs FWHM pulsed dye laser is designed to thermally necrose microvasculature while sparing surrounding tissue structures, and has been demonstrated over the past several years to eradicate benign vascular lesions of the skin such as port wine stain birthmarks in children and adults, with extremely low incidence of scarring. Recent research has shown that the highly specific targeting of microvasculature by the pulsed dye laser may lead to safer, more effective treatment of recurrent or recalcitrant lesions associated with psoriasis, papillomatosis infection, and burn injury, due to the underlying vascular component of these lesions. The first of these new applications of the pulsed dye laser to be reported here is psoriasis. Another area of interest has been the application of the pulsed dye laser to the prevention of hypertrophic burn scars. The third new application is the atraumatic treatment of recurrent respiratory papillmatosis (RRP)