“I had a number of questions this week that came out about the treatment of pigments on the skin, and more specifically treatments using laser versus intense pulsed light, which we described previously, and I wanted to get to a couple of them.
The first one which is a very common question is “What is the best laser or energy technology to treat pigment,” and there’s not really a right answer to that question.
I will say that, intense pulsed light, IPL, often known as photorejuvenation, is a treatment that will get most all of the pigments in the skin that are unwanted be they red or brown. When we treat with IPL, we’re treating an entire facial zone or neck zone, so it’s almost like treating the entire area and letting the instrument itself , or the energy, pick up the unwanted treatments rather than targeting a specific lesion or brown spot or some sort of unwanted pigment. Really, the nice thing about IPL is that it’s a broad way of getting all the skin clear, or using the like-crystal that is applied to the skin surface and treating a zone, like the entire face, and all those unwanted pigments.
In summary, IPL represents a great way of doing large area treatments and debulking the unwanted pigments or chromofores that we see in our skin whereas lasers are more of a targeted treatment for specific indicated vessels or lesions that we see in the skin.
As always, I’m happy to take questions you can go to our blog, DrMaas.com, and you can call us at our office 415-567-7000. This is Corey S. Maas MDTM on Looking Your Best.”
