Poor Results with Palomar Icon Laser for Laser Hair Removal, is the machine causing the problem?

It may be the settings or the timing of your treatments. It takes a series of treatments to get improvement with laser hair removal.  I typically have patients do every 4 weeks for the first 3 times and then every 4-6 weeks for 3 times after. See an expert in laser hair removal for best results. Best, Dr. Emer.

Thank you for your question. The ICON is a machine that does multiple treatments and is a good machine. However, the lack of results you are experiencing can be from the setting be too low. Your physician was probably being conservative to avoid complications as olive skin is difficult to treat with an IPL laser. I recommend finding another laser hair removal expert for better results. 

The settings have been probably too low. Palomar Icon is an excellent IPL machine. But no IPL can give better results to Bikini and underarms, compared to lasers. Icon has skintel reader which reads the melanin amount in the skin and adjusts the settings on the safer side. Safer settings DO NOT mean effective settings! While IPLs like Palomar are great and more comfortable and faster for areas like legs, back and other larger areas, they are not as effective on face, underarms and bikini, used alone. Better choice would be Nd YAG laser f you are on the darker side, or Alexandrite or Diode laser if you are on the lighter side. For someone with an Olive skin we have been able to achieve more than 90% reduction in bikini area by 5-6 sessions with Nd: YAG or Alexandrite, sometimes both. However one has to be careful with Alexandrite in your skin type; and experience matters.

The IPL's are not as effective for hair removal as lasers. Olive skin makes it even tougher. I would consider getting treated with a laser such as a diode laser (Lightsheer Duet is one). My experience is that IPLs are "jack of all trades, master of none". Lower settings are needed for olive skin but if too low, treatments aren't effective. 

Thanks for your question.  The ICON is a good machine, but it is a platform that does multiple treatments.  The lack of results could have been the settings used were too low or it being out of calibration.  Olive skin (or darker) is difficult to treat with an IPL.  They were probably being conservative to avoid any complications.  We prefer using a purpose built, diode laser that is safe for all skin types.  We generally get excellent results in 4-6 treatments and then touch-ups every 1-4 years.