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Rosacea's Red Symptoms Now Treated With Lasers

NEW YORK (CBS) ― You probably know someone who has a flushed, ruddy complexion, maybe with a reddish nose. Many people think it's due to spending a little too much time at happy hour, but it's usually due to a very treatable skin condition.

Bill Clinton's rosy cheeks and red nose were so distinctive, they became part of his caricatures. Likewise for the later Speaker of the House, Tip O'Neil. And of course, there was the prototype for the look, W.C. Fields.

Each had a skin condition called "rosacea."

But it's not just in men and it's not just a red nose.

"I was beginning to get a flush look coming up from my neck and around my face, and then I also noticed that I was getting a breakout right around my nose area," said Moira Linnehan, a rosacea patient. "I thought I was a little too old to be having acne."

Linnehan has the fair skin of her Celtic ancestry, the group most likely to develop rosacea. And the pimples she hated are often the main symptom.

In fact, rosacea is related to acne.

"Rosacea's actually really an inflammatory condition and you get dilated blood vessels, you get pimples, little cysts, pustules, and these broken blood vessels as well," said Dr. Bruce Katz of the Juva Skin & Laser Center.

The good news is that, like acne, rosacea is treatable and usually with the same medications. There are anti-inflammatory lotions and antibiotic creams.

Tougher cases may call for oral antibiotics, but their effectives had started to wane for Linnehan.

"I didn't want to be on antibiotics because it's not a good thing to have in your system all the time," she said.

Fortunately, there's another option. Linnehan is having a laser treatment for her rosacea. It closes off the tiny blood vessels that cause the redness and shrinks the sebaceous glands that lead to pimples.

All the treatments work well, but patients have to continue getting them.

"This is really a chronic condition. We can control it, but unfortunately, we don't have a cure yet. But it's easily controlled," said Katz.

Patients will suffer some red spots following the surgery, but they'll clear up and days and the condition itself should clear up in a week or so. But rosacea does come back, so treatments will likely be periodic.

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