Is unipolar or bipolar best, if it can be used at all?
Every treatment that is performed has to be evaluated by its risks and benefits. Minimally invasive procedures will, in general, have a lower risk profile but also a lesser degree of efficacy. Thus, they will generally have fewer risks and shorter down-times, they may not yield the results that you hope to achieve. The gold standard in the treatment of eye bags, is surgery to remove or reposition the fat and to tighten the skin. This can be achieved by several different methods depending on which best suits your anatomy and your downtime. More minimally invasive procedures to address this area include tightening of the skin or both a tightening of the skin and the fat below the skin. Laser skin resurfacing and peels will only tighten the skin, but will not treat the underlying tissue. You may have enough tightening of the skin to improve the appearance of your eye bags to a certain degree, but perhaps not enough. Treatments that can tighten both the skin and the underlying tissue include radio-frequency ablation (Thermage) or highly focused ultrasound (Ulthera). Again, these are non-surgical therapies that are used for facial tightening. In the past, Thermage has not yielded consistent results and Ulthera is a new, but quite promising technology. If you are interested in a non-invasive treatment without the downtime of a caustic peel, you may benefit from a combination therapy of Ulthera with a fractionated CO2 resurfacing. Again, the only way to truly assess what you a candidate for is to examine you personally.