Port Wine Stain Laser Treatment in Infancy Without Need for Anesthesia

“Is it safe and effective to initiate port-wine stain laser treatments without general anesthesia in infancy?” This is the question researchers Roy G. Geronemus, MD, et al, sought to answer in their new study on the use of the Candela VBeam pulsed dye laser, which was published in the April issue of JAMA Dermatology.
After analyzing the outcomes of 197 infants with port-wine stains who underwent laser treatment during infancy (mean age at the time of first treatment was 3.38 months and the mean number of treatments was 9.8), they found that two-thirds of patents achieved greater than 75 percent clearance with no scarring or permanent pigmentary changes.