Kim Kardashian Got Her Stretch Marks Removed—But Does That Actually Work?

According to E!, Ourian first cooled Kim’s skin and then used a CoolBeam laser to vaporize superficial cells, removing miniscule fractions of skin tissue at a time. As you can expect, it’s not cheap: The whole procedure costs anywhere between $2,900 and $4,900 per area.

Gary Goldenberg, M.D., medical director of the Dermatology Faculty Practice at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, says the laser works by stimulating collagen and elastic fibers, which are stretched out and abnormal in stretch marks. CoolBeam lasers aren’t widely used, he says, but they may be gaining in popularity.

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And, of course, there’s the $4,900 question: Does this thing actually work? It depends. “Stretch marks are very difficult to treat,” Goldenberg says. “I always tell my patients that a treatment that may work for one patient, may not produce the same result in another.”

While stretch marks are a normal part of life, some people don’t like them and that’s OK. If you have stretchies you want to see gone, but don’t have the budget for a laser treatment like Kim, Goldenberg recommends asking your dermatologist about other procedures like microneedling along with platelet-rich plasma (PRP) treatments (a minimally-invasive procedure that uses fine needles to puncture the skin to create a controlled injury and inject a concentration of platelets that help with wound healing), or a single treatment with a fractional CO2 laser (which removes layers of damaged skin). “That will likely give you the best bang for the buck,” he says.

However, these options are still costly: Goldenberg estimates that microneedling with PRP costs around $1,000 per treatment, while a CO2 laser costs around $4,000 per treatment—making it pretty similar to what Kim’s getting.