Abstract
It remains un-elucidated whether the Asian skin mainly demonstrates homogenous racial characteristics or exists as a heterogenous band across the Fitzpatrick phototypes. Whilst this has profound implication on the selection of treatment modalities and parameters for laser surgery, the literature has failed to address laser surgery with respect to the Asian, confer ethnic, skin. This paper seeks to review the current state of knowledge in this aspect and discern areas of ambiguity that serve as directions for future research. It represents one of the first major reviews based predominantly on Asian data and literature.
Plain-language summary
Research on laser surgery has traditionally been conducted on white people. Scientists, however, do not really know what lasers (and what settings) to use for treating Asians. Besides the lack of research on Asians, two other problems remain: first, researchers have previously just lump-summed non-white people into a confusing single category - ethnic-skinned - which is of course not equal to or representative of Asians. Second, we do not even know whether Asians are themselves a lump-sum of people differing in their skin characteristics, or rather, have some skin properties in common. In this paper we try to answer the abovementioned questions and find out areas that need more study in the future.
© Leo W Sham, MMVIII
[1] SHAM, LW et al (2008). Laser surgery for the Asian skin - a conceptual treatise. Australasian Journal of Cosmetic Surgery, 4(2):68-74.
It remains un-elucidated whether the Asian skin mainly demonstrates homogenous racial characteristics or exists as a heterogenous band across the Fitzpatrick phototypes. Whilst this has profound implication on the selection of treatment modalities and parameters for laser surgery, the literature has failed to address laser surgery with respect to the Asian, confer ethnic, skin. This paper seeks to review the current state of knowledge in this aspect and discern areas of ambiguity that serve as directions for future research. It represents one of the first major reviews based predominantly on Asian data and literature.
Plain-language summary
Research on laser surgery has traditionally been conducted on white people. Scientists, however, do not really know what lasers (and what settings) to use for treating Asians. Besides the lack of research on Asians, two other problems remain: first, researchers have previously just lump-summed non-white people into a confusing single category - ethnic-skinned - which is of course not equal to or representative of Asians. Second, we do not even know whether Asians are themselves a lump-sum of people differing in their skin characteristics, or rather, have some skin properties in common. In this paper we try to answer the abovementioned questions and find out areas that need more study in the future.
© Leo W Sham, MMVIII
[1] SHAM, LW et al (2008). Laser surgery for the Asian skin - a conceptual treatise. Australasian Journal of Cosmetic Surgery, 4(2):68-74.
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