Laser procedures promising “vaginal rejuvenation” are being promoted to women in advertisements online, in spa windows, and even in some doctors’ offices.
If my patient group is any guide, women receiving treatment for cancer may be especially interested in obtaining the benefits touted in these ads, as some cancer treatments cause sexual health side effects.
Yet the use of lasers in the vagina is not only ineffective but dangerous, and the Food and Drug Administration should immediately restrict such use.
Products with gentle-sounding names (Mona Lisa Touch and FemTouch are two examples) are advertised as improving vaginal dryness and urinary incontinence. But their use is far from gentle: The high heat of the lasers causes thermal burns. The appropriate medical term for what they do is necrosis, because these lasers kill segments of tissue.
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Many plastic surgery and medi-spa websites repeat manufacturers’ claims that these devices can create a “firmer, more youthful vaginal area” and a tighter vagina — something that doesn’t really exist, as vaginal tissue naturally expands and contracts over time (as with childbirth).
Websites for Cynosure, Lumenis, and Alma Lasers direct clinicians to employ the lasers in the vagina, and say the procedure is “painless.”
But I’ve seen many women instead suffer very painful outcomes.
