Last year, my girlfriends had a chemical peel, and I am interested in getting one myself.

Question: Last year, my girlfriends had a chemical peel, and I am interested in getting one myself.  Does this procedure help with both sun damage and acne scars?

Answer: Most chemical peels that are performed in the spa setting can definitely help with sun damage but virtually all of them will do very little for acne scarring, at least in any significant visible way.  There certainly are chemical peels that can be performed to improve upon acne scarring but they are typically very deep peels such as a Baker-Gordon phenol peel, and these would need to be performed by an experienced physician.  At Quintessa Medical Spa, my personal gold standard for acne scarring is the ProFractional laser by Sciton, which is a fractionated Erbium laser that creates small tunnels of injury in the skin.  When these tunnels heal, there is a large amount of collagen deposited in the deeper portion of the skin that can significantly improve the appearance of depressed acne scars.  There is some redness and weeping of the treated area for several days, and we typically recommend a series of three treatments spaced approximately a month apart but the results can be rather outstanding.