The more risk, the more reward with lasers

Philip Young, MD answers: Number of laser sessions to see skin improvement

I am looking to rejuvnate sun damaged skin.  Will it require lots of laser sessions?


Philip Young, MD
6 months ago

Generally speaking, the more risk the more rewards when considering lasers. Co2 lasers can be varied in a number of ways to increase or decrease the aggressiveness of the treatments. Fractional co2 laser resurfacing has less downtime but has less results. This approach leaves healthy skin in between treated skin so that the healthy skin can help the treated skin rejuvenate. This speeds up the healing and decreases the chance of complications. The results are less significant. 

For more significant results, a more aggressive approach can take more layers of the skin and can go deeper to take away more significant wrinkles. The healing period is much longer and the chance of complications are more, but the potential for greater gains is more possible. These lasers improve the skin by decreasing wrinkles, removing superficial pigmentation, decreasing pores, and tightening the skin.

The more aggressive approach will need less number of treatments. The less aggressive approach with less results will need more treatments to get more results. With the most aggressive co2 resurfacing you may not need to get treated for another 8-10 years.  If you want to improve sun spot and red spots then IPL or other lasers can be used to improve them and typically it can take from 4-5 treatment to get satisfactory results.

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