Can Your “Redness Laser” Really Help Prevent Skin Cancer?

By Jennifer Hollander, Nurse Practitioner MSN, FNP-C

Most people book a laser appointment for cosmetic reasons: persistent facial redness. Rosacea. Broken capillaries. The pink marks that linger long after acne has healed. For decades, pulsed dye lasers, most commonly known by the brand name Vbeam, have been used to treat these concerns.

What is newer, and more interesting, is emerging evidence suggesting that some of these same laser treatments may be associated with a reduced risk of future skin cancer in certain high-risk patients.

Over the past several years, retrospective research has suggested that patients with a prior history of non-melanoma skin cancer who undergo facial pulsed dye laser (vbeam) treatments may experience up to a 50 percent reduction in subsequent facial basal cell and squamous cell carcinomas, the two most common forms of skin cancer. To understand why this connection is even plausible, it helps to understand what these lasers actually do.

Pulsed dye lasers work by delivering light that targets hemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying component of red blood cells. In practical terms, this allows the laser to selectively treat tiny blood vessels in the skin without damaging the surrounding tissue. That is why these lasers are so effective for redness, flushing, visible capillaries, certain scars, and vascular birthmarks. These uses are well established and widely accepted.

What is new is the suggestion that repeatedly treating chronically sun-damaged skin with this type of laser may influence how that skin behaves over time in people already known to be at higher risk for skin cancer.

The data most often cited behind the “50 percent reduction” figure come from a 2025 retrospective cohort study led by Jamie Hu, MD, with Mathew Avram, MD, JD, and colleagues at Massachusetts General Hospital. The researchers followed 118 patients who had previously been diagnosed with facial basal cell or squamous cell carcinoma. All participants were considered high-risk by definition, having already developed skin cancer once.

About half of the patients received at least one facial pulsed dye laser treatment. The others did not and served as matched controls. Over several years of follow-up, roughly 27 percent of patients who received laser treatment developed another facial skin cancer, compared with 54 percent of patients in the control group. After accounting for factors such as age and sex, patients who did not receive laser treatment were nearly three times as likely to develop another facial skin cancer.

This study does not prove that lasers prevent skin cancer. It shows an association, not causation. The research was retrospective, meaning the investigators looked back at existing patient records rather than assigning treatments in advance. The study involved a relatively small number of patients and was conducted at a single academic center using specific devices and protocols. Most importantly, all participants were already high-risk. These findings cannot be generalized to the average person with no history of skin cancer.

What makes the signal more compelling is that it has now appeared more than once.

Earlier work from the same research group examined a different category of lasers known as non-ablative fractional lasers. These are the lasers most people associate with improving skin texture, fine lines, pigmentation, and sun damage rather than redness. In a 2023 study, patients with a prior history of facial skin cancer who underwent non-ablative fractional laser treatments developed roughly half the rate of subsequent facial basal cell or squamous cell carcinoma compared with matched controls.

Non-ablative fractional lasers work differently from pulsed dye lasers. Instead of targeting blood vessels, they deliver heat into the skin in a microscopic grid-like pattern, creating thousands of tiny zones of controlled injury while leaving the surrounding skin intact. This triggers a repair response that improves texture and tone without removing the surface of the skin.

Examples include 1550-nanometer erbium fractional lasers and 1927-nanometer thulium fractional lasers, which many patients recognize under names like Fraxel 1550 and Fraxel 1927. These devices are already cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of actinic damage, a term used to describe skin that has been chronically injured by ultraviolet exposure and is known to carry a higher risk of future skin cancer.

Taken together, these studies suggest that non-ablative lasers long considered purely cosmetic may have broader biological effects in sun-damaged skin.

The exact mechanism is not fully understood, but several plausible explanations exist. Laser treatments create controlled micro-injury that stimulates skin repair. During that process, heavily ultraviolet-damaged or genetically altered skin cells may be preferentially removed. There is also early evidence suggesting that laser treatments may influence local immune activity in the skin through changes in blood flow and inflammatory signaling, though this remains an area of ongoing research rather than established fact.

There is an important caveat that cannot be ignored. Even among patients who received pulsed dye laser treatment, more than one in four high-risk individuals still developed another facial skin cancer. Lasers are not protective armor. They do not replace daily sunscreen use, protective clothing, or regular full-body skin examinations. They are not treatments for visible or suspected skin cancers. And they are not proven to reduce cancer risk in people without a prior history of basal cell or squamous cell carcinoma.

In clinical practice, this evidence informs but does not dictate decision making. For patients with a history of facial skin cancer who already qualify for laser treatment because of redness, visible blood vessels, or significant sun damage, these findings represent a meaningful potential secondary benefit. What they do not support is starting laser treatments solely as a skin cancer prevention strategy in otherwise average-risk individuals.

Lasers are promising, but they do not replace the fundamentals. First comes behavior, including sun avoidance and protection. Second comes surveillance, including regular dermatologic examinations and early evaluation of suspicious lesions. Adjunctive interventions, such as treatments for precancerous sun damage and potentially certain laser therapies, belong further down that list.

Widely used non-ablative lasers, including pulsed dye lasers like Vbeam and fractional lasers such as Fraxel 1550 and 1927, are now associated with a substantial reduction in subsequent facial skin cancers in high-risk patients when used in experienced clinical settings.

A laser most people associate with improving how skin looks is now linked to changes in how damaged skin behaves. It challenges the idea that cosmetic treatments are superficial by definition. Anything that repeatedly interacts with living skin also interacts with biology. In some cases, a treatment designed for appearance may end up doing more than we expected.

Jennifer Hollander is a board-certified nurse practitioner and founder of Holländer Clinic in Santa Monica. Her work focuses on evidence-based aesthetic dermatology, skin health, and facial preservation, with an emphasis on precision, restraint, and long-term outcomes.