The results you get from any resurfacing procedure will depend on how aggressive the procedure was done. This also directly correlates to healing time. This is a very confusing subject for patients because there are so many technologies out there along with a lot of mis-information. The newer non-ablative treatments have minimal down time, but create minimal effects. This is great for the 40-year-old who wants to liven up their skin. If your problems are more significant, don’t waste your money on non-ablative treatments. Sadly, the physicians and companies that sell these machines are much better at marketing than they are at getting results. Before and after photographs cropped down to small areas of the face and taken with harsh angled lighting in the before and soft straight on lighting in the after should tip you off to phony results. Absolutely nothing can touch the results of a standard ablative resurfacing in the patient who has signicant age and sun related damage.

The best of the new technologies available today are the fractionated CO2 lasers. There are many brands and many of these will give the same results when set to similar settings. These lasers really do open up an in-between world of very nice results with a managable healing course, even for busy people. Don’t expect to wipe away deep wrinkles, but here we have something that in one week of healing will provide very demonstrable results especially with sun spots and fine wrinkles. This tends to be the best procedure for the typical mid to late 40-year-old, while conventional resurfacing is usually necessary for the person in their 50’s and beyond. The fractionated lasers are also useful on dark skinned people and other parts of the body besides the face. Of course, everyone is unique and needs to be evaluated as such.