Austin Laser Resurfacing doctors

CO2 laser and similarly used dual mode Er:Yag lasers are excellent choices for patients of northern European skin types who have significant age and sun related damage.  Hands-down, nothing gives better results when it comes to wrinkles.  Asian and Hispanic skin types are rarely suited to this type of laser because of the de-pigmentation (and oddly enough opposite hyperpigmentation) that can result.  In addition, darker skin types tend also to be thicker which is less responsive to lasers (though less prone to wrinkles in the first place).

There is probably no cure for your hypo-pigmentation.  If the CO2 laser failed to give you the texture improvement you wanted, I would suspect that no laser (or other treatment) will.  While a fractionated CO2 is unlikely to cause further pigment trouble, I doubt you will find the wrinkle improvement you desire.  I even have less confidence that a non-ablative laser would produce noticable improvement.  Sometimes we have to accept that we don't have a solution to a problem and do the right thing by leaving it alone.

The results you get from any resurfacing procedure will depend on how aggressive the procedure was done.  This also directly correlates to healing time.  Sadly, this is a very confusing subject for patients becuase there are so many technologies out there along with a lot of mis-information.  The newer non-ablative treatments have minimal down time, but create minimal effects.  This is great for the 40-year-old who wants to liven up their skin.  If your problems are more significant, don't waste your money on non-ablative treatments.  Sadly, the physicians and companies that sell these machines are much better at marketing than they are at getting results.  Before and after photographs cropped down to small areas of the face and  taken with harsh angled lighting in the before and soft straight on lighting in the after should tip you off to phony results.  Absolutely nothing can touch the results of a standard ablative resurfacing in the patient who has signicant age and sun related damage.

The best of the new technologies available today are the fractionated CO2 lasers.  There are many brands and many of these will give the same results when set to similar settings.  These lasers really do open up an in-between world of very nice results with a managable healing course, even for busy people.  Don't expect to wipe away deep wrinkles, but here we have something that in one week of healing will provide very demonstrable results especially with sun spots and fine wrinkles.  This tends to be the best procedure for the typical mid to late 40-year-old, while conventional resurfacing is usually necessary for the person in their 50's and beyond.  The fractionated lasers are also useful on dark skinned people and other parts of the body besides the face.  Of course, everyone is unique and needs to be evaluated as such.

What is the best laser? That depends on what type of skin you have, what the condition of your skin is, what you expect from the results, how much money you are willing to spend, how much healing you are willing to undertake, and how much risk you are willing to accept.

To jump ahead and just assume you have significant age and skin related damage to your skin, you are Caucasian, and money/healing are not big issues, then hands down the best results will be had by a deep laser resurfacing. I use a Sciton dual mode Er:YAG laser which offers tremendous control in the depth of tissue peel and more importantly in the depth of tissue thermal injury. It is the thermal injury to the deep skin that makes the wrinkles go away. CO2 laser can produce similar results but there is no control over the depth of peel versus the depth of thermal injury. This type of peel takes a while to heal from, but no other laser procedure can even touch the potential for results.

If you have less severe of a problem, less money, less time to heal, and/or skin other than Caucasian, the fractionated CO2 laser is a great option. I use a Matrix fractionated CO2. This laser opens up treatments for people with a week to heal and a wide variety skin types. This laser is good for both pigmentation problems (age spots), and wrinkles.

For people with just age spots and red spots, then the non-invasive lasers and photo facial type treatments work nice. There is little or no downtime. Do not expect to see any improvement in wrinkles.

There are a ridiculous number of treatments out there that promise to do miracles to your skin. Most of them don't do anything or are just "polishing" procedures that improve your skin for a few days or weeks.

As always, look at the photos of before/after! You must look very carefully at makeup and lighting. Time and time again I see ads for magic treatments that so obviously used different lighting before to after that I just laugh. It is sad that these people are so unscrupulous. Pictures should include the eyes, look at the reflection of the light source in the eyes, it should be the same in before/after photos. Look for makeup differences and look for the brightness to be the same. Obviously, no two photos will be perfectly matched, but there is no excuse for them to not be pretty darn close.