Left Great Toe nail before treatment

These photographs demonstrate the results after several weeks following treatment with a laser for nail fungus. The green mark at the base of the nail is placed there to mark the nail growth. Following the treatment with the laser the fungus is sterilized underneath the nail bed and healthy nail grows out.

Several weeks later

The healthy toenail grows out very slowly but clearly is much more healthy than the original pretreatment nail. Laser treatment appears to be very effective in this patient.

re*be® has been evaluating and successfully initially treating some of the most difficult toe fungus cases with one of our newest Sciton® lasers. This piece of equipment has blended 1064/1319 wavelength with combined 70 watts of power but due to the delivery system we use only a small fraction of this power available to us. Our newest laser in this arena however uses pure 1064 wavelength light and is combined into a beautiful delivery system built by Sciton® on their Joule® platform called Clearsense™. This is much more power than is needed to sterilize onychomycosis (toe fungus and fingernail fungus). There are other lasers on the market earlier that do not have this amount of power and may have difficulty clearing the stubborn fungus with their smaller spot size treatment areas.

The basic toe structures that are infected with the toe fungus (onychomycosis) are shown in this diagram. Unfortunately the toe fungus gets under the toenail and lifts it off of the nail bed. There is very little circulation to where the fungus lives so oral medication is at a disadvantage. The medication works to kill the fungus but cannot get to where the fungus lives. The laser energy on the other hand can pass through the toenail and heat up the nail bed essentially cooking the fungus. This is done in a way that your good tissues survive. It takes about one year to grow a completely new big toe nail. We place a notch in the nail bed and when treated with the laser if successful the nail bed grows out. Pink healthy nail bed should be apparent in two to three months. This indicates the treatment was successful.

The healthy toenail is clearly visible at the base of each toenail. Toenails grow pretty slow and it can take a year or even longer to see healthy toenail replace the diseased nail fungus portion.