Would IPL help all this pigment or make it worse? (Photo)

Question

I was recomended IPL to clear my pigment issues. However, I’m scared because my skin is highly reactive and can’t the heat from the laser trigger inflammation that can my pigment worse? Also I had a combo of IPL and Fraxel done about a year ago. She used really high settings and I swear it resulted in hypopigmentation that added to my brown and red pigment. However my dermatologist doesn’t think it’s hypopigmentation from the laser. He thinks I’m just seeing white spots because of everything else I have going on.

Anna Petropoulos, MD, FRCS · Answer

Hello Ashley7586,
 I have been working with pigment disorders and laser/IPL devices for the last 25 years. I would not touch your skin with another heat based device. You are clearly, like you said, highly reactive to heat based devices. If you were to a patient in our plastic surgery practice, I would just do a light blend of chemical peels and a targeted at home skin care regimen.
The idea that the white areas may represent a combination of true hypopigmentation (loss or reduction of pigment) and surrounding hyperpigmentation (darkening) is plausible. Contrast between lighter and darker areas can make the lighter areas appear more dramatic than they actually are. It's also possible that the lightened areas are just your regular skin tone. I think it's likely a mix of both.

This can be improved by lightening up the darkened skin cells, but you need to find an experienced esthetician or dermatologist that has experience with pigment disorders. A multimodal approach—sun protection, targeted topical therapies, carefully selected chemical peels, and long-term follow-up—is commonly used for pigment disorders. Improvement often takes months rather than weeks. A big factor in how successful your results are will be how consistent you are with the recommendations given to you. There will be at home skin care routine consistency that will need to be done in order to be achieve the best results. I tell my patients "You see me once every 4-6 weeks, what you do in between will make a huge impact on how quickly you see changes!" I wish you success in improving this!  My name is Jeanine Oteri and I am a medical esthetician/laser technician with 25 years experience answering on behalf of Dr. Anna Petropoulos, MD, F.R.C.S.

Would IPL help all this pigment or make it worse? (Photo)

Answers (1)

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