DOES THE PULSED TUNABLE DYE-LASER HAVE A ROLE IN THE MANAGEMENT OF INFANTILE HEMANGIOMAS - OBSERVATIONS BASED ON 3 YEARS EXPERIENCE

Over a 3-year period, 50 patients with strawberry hemangiomas and 7 pa tients with postinvolutional redness or telangiectasia were treated wi th the SPTL-1 laser (Candela Corporation, Wayland, Mass.). The SPTL-1 laser emits pulsed light at a wavelength of 585 nm with a pulse durati on of 450 ms. Lesions with a superficial red component were treated ev en if they had a significant subcutaneous component; however, wholly s ubcutaneous lesions were excluded. The series included 42 female patie nts aged between 1 and 72 months (mean 14 months) and 8 male patients aged between 3 and 12 months (mean 7 months). The mean number of treat ments administered was 3.8 (range 1 to 8), and the average number of p ulses per patient was 55 (range 2 to 350). This series also included 7 patients (6 female and 1 male) with postinvolutional redness or telan giectasia with a mean age of 12 years (range 2 to 23 years). They rece ived an average of 3.4 treatments per patient (range 2 to 8) with an a verage of 35 pulses per treatment session (range 3 to 150). In this st udy group, life-threatening complications secondary to the hemangioma were rare in that only one patient suffered from an airway obstruction requiring a tracheostomy and three patients suffered from complete vi sual occlusion. A significant improvement in color was achieved in 30 patients (53 percent), but there was no appreciable re duction in bulk in any of the lesions despite repeated exposure to laser light.