60 Year Old Male - Centennial, CO

I had just turned 60 and while I have had a few chemical peels in the past, I decided I wanted to do something a bit more aggressive with the hope of getting a better result in reducing fine lines and perhaps tighten up the skin a bit. From everything I read, short of surgery, it seemed like the CO2 ablative laser treatment would be the most effective. I found a Groupon from Laser Aesthetics of Colorado, so did a little research and did not find any bad reviews, so decided to give it a try. I contacted Susan Davenport and after chatting a bit, set up the appointment. Susan is not a doctor, but it seems like she has had years of experience, so I felt quite comfortable with having her do the procedure. She operates out of a 2 room suite in an office building and is not located in an actual doctor’s office. At the appointment, we went over what to expect for down time and the aftercare instructions. From what I had read, I was expecting to be down for about 2 weeks, but she had indicated that I should be able to return to work in about a week with just a little redness. At the time, I thought that less down time was great, but was still prepared to take more time off if necessary. She applied a topical for the pain and the procedure was quite tolerable. She indicated that I would want to use ice packs on my face that day, but it ended up that I really didn’t need to do that. While my face felt hot that first day, it was not that bad, which at the time seemed like a good thing. I was able to return to work 6 days after the procedure with just mild redness as she had indicated, but I was beginning to wonder about the effectiveness of the treatment. I only experience moderate peeling and other than some reduction in pore size, I really saw no improvement in wrinkles or firmness. At my 10 day post treatment follow-up, Susan indicated that I was still healing and that it might get better. I decided to wait until a month after my treatment to write my review. The redness is gone and still the results are underwhelming. I did not expect to see much improvement in deep expression lines (perhaps some softening), but there was not even any improvement in fine lines and to date there has not been any noticeable improvement in skin firmness. I know that the collagen production is supposed to be stimulated for up to 6 months, so maybe I will notice some improvement as time goes on and will update if that is the case.
I have tried to contact Susan to see if we could figure out why this has not been effective on me. Now that I look back on the short down time and the fact that the procedure did not take that long and was not that painful, my first thought was that being I was a new patient, maybe she took it easy on the setting. I am also not sure if she is limited as to setting she can use because she is not actually a doctor. Unfortunately she has not responded to my questions, so I can’t make that determination. My conclusion at this point in time is that the CO2 ablative Laser treatment was not an effective treatment for me based on my results, but will reserve judgment a little, in that I can’t be sure if the poor result is the treatment or the practitioner. At this point in time I would say that I would not have this procedure done again.