Hello. I am not a doctor but I am really hoping to get some responses regarding potential eye damage when being treated with the Palomar Starlux laser for hair removal. I will try to keep this short.

Today I was being treated with this Laser and was wearing goggles to protect my eye. The opthamologist's assistant was lasering an area on my stomach. She asked me a question about what area I wanted to have treated. I couldn't see well through the goggles so I took them off to point to the area thinking that she was through zapping me. Well, right as I looked down at the handpiece she zapped my stomach. I DID NOT HAVE MY EYE PROTECTION ON. I could see a bunch of red light get emitted. Now the laser was not pointed at my eyes but rather was pointed at my stomach. Still I could see the bright red light come out all around the point of the hand piece.

I am absolutely freaking out now worried that I may have done permanent damage to my eyes. Could someone please tell me if I might have indeed done significant and/or permanent damage to my eyes from this? This has happened a handful of times over the years but this is the first time that I was looking directly at the hand piece while it was being zapped (although the point was aimed at my stomach not my eyes).

Also over the years I have been treated in my beard area and in between the eyebrows. I always wore goggles but still would see incredibly bright flashes as the laser went off.

Could someone please tell me if I should be concerned? I don't think that I notice any difference in my vision now but am worried that somehow I may have gotten damage that I will not notice until later.

I forgot to mention that the Starlux Laser was on the maximum setting when this happened.

You dont have anything to be worried about at all. I would equate what you went through as being similiar to looking directly at your car head lights on with the high beams turned on. It may be different if you were using an actual laser and pointed it directly at your eyes, but not an IPL pointed away from you.

Thank you for your reply Texas Laser!