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If you treat a rosacea patient with a laser do you stop other concomitant rosacea treatments?

Rosacea

You. So when I'm treating patients with rosacea, I'm typically using the pulse dye laser to improve their erythema and telangtasia. There's two questions that often come up related to this. I'll have other practitioners ask me do I need to stop doxycycline because they're getting a laser treatment? Do I need to worry about photosensitivity with doxycycline? The answer is no, you do not need to stop doxycycline or any of the other photosensitive tetracyclines while they're getting pulse dylaser. The pulse dye laser operates at 585 nanometer wavelength, and doxycycline and some of the other tetracyclines only have photosensitivity, really within the ultraviolet a spectrum, which is between 340. So you do not need to have your patients stop any of the oral antibiotics, even if typically, you'd be very concerned about them going out in the sun on those medications. Now, in regards to topical agents, the only topical therapeutics that I will have my patients stop prior to doing pulse dilaser are the alpha agonists like bromonidine and oxymetazoline. Because these medications work by constricting the blood vessels and lessening erythema. To get the optimal result from your pulse dilaser, you want to have that target chromophore present as much as possible. You don't want vasoconstriction at the time of pulse dilaser treatment. So if I'm going to do pulse dilaser treatment, I will have my patients stop their alpha agonists a few days prior to the pulse dilaser treatment. Usually about three days prior will do it.