Laser skin treatments are growing in popularity because they provide non-surgical options for people that don’t want to go under the knife.

At the McLean Clinic, Medical Skin Care Specialist Miriam Denham encourages patients to do their research on medical grade lasers in comparison to lasers used at salons or in practices that don’t have a supervising physician on-site. “There’s usually a difference in the depth of penetration that the light or the laser beam reaches within the skin, and certain depths have to have a physician on-site,” Denham explains, and will ultimately have a better long-term result as well.

In order to determine what treatments a patient should receive, Denham must first find out what it is that’s bothering the person. “If a patient comes in with a lot of blood vessels on their face, we know what type of laser to treat that with,” she says, adding that it’s usually a deeper penetrating beam that’s able to distinguish between the blood and anything else that may be on the skin.

For patients looking to get rid of age or brown spots, Denham will typically use a treatment called Intense Pulse Light, which is a laser “that can distinguish the brown from the red, so it’s usually a series of treatments they would come in for to correct that colour.”

But not all patients are candidates for such treatments, Denham claims. People with darker skin pigment don’t normally have much of the superficial brown so she will often treat such cases with safer skin care products instead.

Patients that visit the McLean Clinic for skin tightening treatments will often have a one-time treatment called Thermage done, “which uses a radio frequency to tighten collagen in the skin,” Denham explains. Patients can expect the Thermage treatment to last about a year and a half and won’t experience any down time. “Our typical Intense Pulse Light does tone, but there are different modalities to treat skin tightening,” she adds.

Different types of lasers can be used to resurface the skin to treat acne scarring and other traumatic injuries. “They usually have a lot of down time,” Denham says, “but we can pick the amount of down time by adjusting the different types of energy into the skin.”

Hair removal is a big part of the laser industry too, Denham says, with lasers that will target different hair colours. “Traditionally, laser hair removal works best on a lighter skin, with a darker pigment in the hair. So if a person has a tan or they’re a darker pigmented skin there’s a lot more risks associated with it.”

And though there’s about a 20 to 30 per cent population that does not respond to laser hair removal, many patients will see a 70 to 90 per cent permanent reduction in the treated area. Denham explains that “typically hair removal is usually about a four to six treatment modality,” but “sometimes people will take six to eight, depending on the patient.”

For more information on the laser treatments offered at the McLean Clinic, visit their website at www.mcleanclinic.com.