Treating acne with light

There's an interesting clinical study that came out recently in the Journal of Drugs in Dermatology that examined the effects of three different phototherapies on moderate to severe acne. The effects of of pulsed dye laser (PDL), intense pulsed light (IPL) and blue-red combination light-emitting diode (LED) treatments were reported in the "Phototherapy in the treatment of acne vulgaris" article. Here are some highlights from the paper:

• One advantage phototherapies have over standard topical and oral acne treatments is that patients don't have to do anything in between treatments, like remembering to take their pills or apply their lotions.
• PDL took fewer treatments to work. It took an average of 4 PDL, 6 IPL or10 LED treatments to clear up the faces of the test subjects. (They counted a person's face as clear if they had 90% fewer zits than when they started.)
  
• After one month of treatments, PDL had cleared the most zits at 73.75% reduction compared to 41.68% for IPL and 35.64% for LED. (PDL and IPL treatments were given once a week and LED treatments were give twice a week. So on average those gettting PDL treatments had clear faces in 4 weeks, LED in 5 weeks and IPL in 6 weeks of treatments.)
• All phototherapies tested in the study were easy to deliver, well tolerated, pain-free and side-effect free and gave a satisfyingly high clearance rate in patients with inflammatory acne.

So, PDL looks like the choice if speed and the fewest number of treatments are essential. The LED treatments take the most treatments but are also the most economical. (At our office we have two blue light machines, ClearLight® and BLU-U® which are similar in treatment effects to the red-blue LED light that was in the study. Twenty-minute acne treatments with these cost only $25 each.)

If topical or oral treatments aren't working for you, you have options. And we have those options available here. Call 509-735-1100 today to schedule your PDL, IPL or blue light treatment today.

For more information about using laser and light treatments for acne, take a look at this article from the American Academy of Dermatology.

And check out all our current specials on our website.