Multiple options for acne scar treatment

Philip Young, MD answers: Laser treatment for acne scars

I am looking for a way to get rid of acne scars. Heard good things about some laser skin treatments but i don't know how to choose between them all because there are so many laser treatments that are said to work on lots of problems, but i really just want to know which one works the best on acne scars.


Philip Young, MD
6 months ago

There are multiple ways to improve your scarring from acne. You want the simple answer. Yes, there are a lot of lasers out there but most simply put lasers are used to take away the top layers of the skin to remove the scarring and then what happens is that your skin cells deep within your hair follicles grow out and "resurface" your face and skin. The newer fractional lasers essentially manipulate your skin deeper to cause skin tightening to help improve the wrinkles such as Fraxel and Deep FX.  Lasers are just part of the treatment. You want to either have a co2 or erbium laser. Co2 allows more aggressive treatment.

All of the other names are just company names for either the co2 or erbium. Just ask your doctor to tell you what laser it is and the most important is knowing the wavelength and the name that is associated with the wavelength. Sometimes it requires other procedures for certain type of scars. Some of your more depressed scars require surgical excision or subscision where you use a needle to elevate the depressed scars so that the depressed area is more level with the rest of the skin. At times, this entails cutting around the whole part of the depressed scars to allow it to elevate. Laser resurfacing after this helps with the healing.

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