In an effort to identify the most and least effective treatment options for striae distensae (SD), Nicholas A. Ross, MD, et al, conducted a literature review of PubMed, MEDLINE, Scopus, Embase and Google scholar, reviewing published studies from 1773 to August 6, 2016. They identified 68 articles that met their inclusion and exclusion criteria, noting that there were few randomized, controlled trials that evaluated long-term efficacy.
Based on clinical and anecdotal evidence, Dr. Ross and his colleagues determined that nonablative and ablative fractional lasers have shown “modest SD improvement compared with other treatment modalities (including including Excimer laser, CuBr laser, pulsed dye laser, and 1,064-nm Nd:YAG laser)." They encourage future researchers to focus on study design, creating larger, split-body or split-SD head-to-head studies with long-term followup and objective outcome measures. The study was published in Dermatologic Surgery (May 2017).
