DOES THE PATIENT NEED TO SHAVE BEFORE THE PROCEDURE?
The patient should shave 2 or 3 days before the procedure, leaving small 2 to
3mm stubs of hair, but no longer. This is critically important for several reasons:
- Visible stubs ensures the hairs haven’t been waxed or plucked, so the shaft and follicle are intact and therefore efficacy is not compromised;
- Seeing the stubs allows you to establish the appropriate fluence for the patient, which should be set at a level that causes most of the stubs to visibly singe;
- Seeing the stubs allows you to target the areas with actual follicles, rather than wasting time delivering pulses on the skin in between follicles; and
- Seeing the hairs that DON’T singe enables the clinician to perform a second pass of 1 or 2 pulses per hair that DID NOT respond, to enhance total clearance per session.
