Is Active FX a Good Treatment for Smoker's Lines?

Active FX can be a great treatment for smoker's lines.  The downtime, however will usually be longer than a week.  The reason is that the treatment settings must be made to address deeper lines in the collagen.  We usually do 2 passes around the mouth with higher energy settings and have achieved very nice results.  As with all lasers, the treatment settings play a crucial role.

Yes, it can be a good treatment, but you will generally need higher settings- at which point you treatment changes from "Active FX" to "Max FX", and may require more healing time. Total FX is an option for a  more aggressive treatment without compromise on healing time.

Smoker's lines respond well to Active Fx CO2 laser.  There is always improvement but not always as much as desired.  Sometimes the lines are just too deep. In these cases adding a little filler like Restylane can plump the lines and a couple of units of Botox can relax the "pucker".  Excellent results can be achieved with this combination approach.

ActiveFX is a good alternative as a CO2 fractional laser. I still think that TotalFX (combining DeepFX and ActiveFX) is the best alternative for this area.

Deep perioral or smoker's lines can be treated with fractionated CO2 laser resurfacing. We find the best results when we combine Deep FX with Active FX. The Deep FX penetrates deeper and stimulates the collagen remodeling necessary to tighten the skin while the more superficial Active FX will improve overall texture and pigmentation. Down time is not significant; most patients are healed by day 5-7 and can apply makeup to camouflage any residual redness.

I have used the Lumenis Encore with FX technology for the last few years and am very impressed with its ability to soften lines of facial wrinkling and do so with much less downtime than with previous technologies. In the past, smoker's lines have been addressed in many ways--most of which provided little to no improvement. My experience with the FX is that to really treat these lines, you need to use a combination of DeepFX (for skin tightening) and ActiveFX (for softening of... more