Question: I am 28, female, and have a lot of sun damage due the fact that I fall asleep a lot under the sun. I would like to get a chemical peel to make my face look better. Though my face looks pretty bad, I really have no idea if I will need a light, medium, or heavy peel. How bad does skin have to be to require one of the two heavier peels?
Answer: A deep chemical peel is typically only used in patients with significant deep wrinkles on their face or in patients with rather significant acne scarring. If we are only treating sun damage with some mild textural irregularities and pigmentary changes, then we can typically perform a medium-depth peel such as a Jessner’s TCA peel or, more commonly performed at Quintessa Medical Spa, we will use the Erbium laser and perform a MicroLaserPeel. Oftentimes, we need to perform a series of these peels to give the patient an adequate improvement but each peel only comes with a few days of any significant downtime, and risks are significantly minimized by the fact that it is relatively superficial.
When we require wrinkle reduction, we need to treat the skin deeper, and that is when we either use the ProFractional laser by Sciton or perform a deep Erbium laser resurfacing or we can certainly consider deeper chemical peels, though I personally feel that the deeper chemical peels come with more side effects and risk of complication than the laser peels do. I would highly recommend a consultation at Quintessa Medical Spa so that your skin can be adequately analyzed, and a treatment plan can be created to satisfy your desires.