Acne Laser Treatment

Recently there’s been a lot of buzz about acne laser treatment. This isn’t something new in the acne world but it's still an interesting topic. If you’ve ever watched reality makeover shows like Extreme Makeover or The Swan, it’s obvious they promote laser treatment as the quick and most effective fix to make skin more beautiful, implying it is the best option for treating acne.

With the constant publicity laser treatment gets on television, I am sure many would start researching and see if the hype is true. Most of us would want to fix it and forget it. So, I was curious about what I would find on the Internet too. I typed “acne laser treatment” in the three major search engines and found 867,921 hits from MSN, 2,650,000 hits from Yahoo, and coming out on top, a whopping 2,660,000 hits from Google!

If you were to research these links you’d probably find that most companies will wholeheartedly declare that laser treatment reduces “most inflammatory acne in a few visits,” or guarantees at least “90% [of people that use the treatment] experience a reduction in acne lesions” in bold letters. Initially that might send a major warning sign. SCAM! But the fact is, laser treatment really can help.

People with severe acne and who are at risk of scarring may want to consider the option more than most. Let’s face it; if anyone with substantial acne has not gotten adequate results from effective over the counter acne treatments or from prescription medications, they should definitely consider acne laser treatment. The personal cost of ignoring acne is too high.

On the other hand, and this is probably the biggest deterrent, it’s pretty expensive. Though cost varies around the country, it’s going to run in the range of $2,300 to $3,200 for a series of laser treatments. That’s substantial. Fortunately, though it doesn’t work for everyone, the odds are pretty good.

To explore real cases of people who’ve used laser treatment I went to acne.org and read how people rated certain laser treatments (mainly CO2) and whether they would recommend it to others. There were twenty-five entries total, all had used some form of acne laser treatment and rated it on a scale of one to five. Not surprisingly, only two of the twenty-five people highly recommended (4 on a scale of 5) the procedure, whereas eighteen saw it as a very poor option (2 on a scale of 5).

So why all the negative responses if it really is a worthwhile option? A major factor relates to the KIND of laser being used. In a study published in the July 2006 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, investigators reported excellent long-term success in treating acne with laser. Their excellent results were obtained with the 1450-nm diode laser. There was a 75% reduction in acne lesions and the improvement was maintained over the 12 months of the study. That’s pretty good!