Overview
Photorejuvenation, simply put, is the use of light (in laser or non-laser form) to make the skin look younger. Aged skin has wrinkles, brown spots, uneven texture, and sags due to gravity. The latest lasers tend to work very well for most age-related problems except for sagging skin and lines due to muscle expression. A bewildering variety of lasers claim to improve aged skin, and this overview will not be able to cover each in detail. Cost ranges from a few hundred dollars to several thousand dollars per treatment, depending on the technology.
Several general types of technology exist:
- Ablative with total skin resurfacing – The entire surface of the skin is peeled away.
- Fractional ablative laser resurfacing – Pinpoint laser beams peel away many small areas of skin.
- Fractional non-ablative laser resurfacing – Pinpoint laser beams that super-heat many small areas of skin leaving microscopic areas of skin intact.
