Noninvasive In Vivo Assessment of Vessel Characteristics in Capillary Vascular Malformations Exposed to Five Pulsed Dye Laser Treatments

Abstract

The authors found that vessels with a diameter greater than 50 mum were adequately treated, whereas those smaller than 50 microm appeared resistant to laser treatment. These data would suggest that pulse durations longer than 0.45 msec are not required to treat large ectatic capillary vascular malformation vessels. The authors suggest that the failure to treat very-small-diameter vessels is attributable to thermal dissipation from the target vessels, whose thermal relaxation time is much shorter than the pulse duration of the laser used.