Pulse Dye Laser Treatment Update

We are changing the face of beauty over here at the Ybarra house hold.  Little Sloane has completed 2 of her estimated 10 PDL treatments and we are already seeing a big difference in the appearance of her Port Wine Stain.  You can see how it looked when she was born at the bottom of this post.  You will notice that there is a big difference in the color already!  

They continue to put the lidocaine cream on her face, which she's always so confused about what they are doing.  Trying to keep those little hands off her face is tricky and I'm sure will be more and more of a challenge as she gets older.  People have asked what the machine and laser looks like so I snapped a quick photo while playing her favorite lullaby music in the room.  The more she cries/screams the better the outcome of the treatment as is brings the capillaries to the surface and Dr. Teng can see the stain better.  I know it sounds sad, but it's really done soooo fast.  This treatment was a little longer, maybe 35 seconds, as she covered a larger area and ramped up the strength of the pulse.  

The bottom picture is the before and after photo of this treatment.  See!!! The redness has already decreased a lot since she was born!  I know the after picture looks narly with all the bruising, but it does not bother her AT ALL.  She calms down immediately after we are done with the 35 seconds of treatment and just wants her bottle or to be unswaddled.  The bruising lasted about 5-6 days and we kept her covered with a little wide brimmed hat by iPlay, which I of course want to get her name embroidered on it :) To be honest I don't see much of a difference in the color from the first and second treatment, but hey, we are only done with two treatments.  The biggest changes are by her hairline.  They still are unable to laser the area by her eyebrow and eye lid, which will probably remain the darkest since it can affect her vision.  Maybe when she's 6-9mo we will have to do the eye lid, but that's a whole other ball game as they have to add protective inserts into her eye.    We did learn that the appearance of the stain will remain stable after all these treatments and will start to change it's texture/color/size when she hits puberty.  By doing these treatments early, we hope that the changes when she is older are very minimal.  

We follow up with Ophthalmology at Stanford Children's Hospital this week to get a baseline on her vision as Port Wine Stains can cause eye involvement or glaucoma.  We are confident she does not have any of these additional problems, but we need to make sure we only have to follow up with dermatology for the treatments.