Treatment of Wrinkles with a Laser from the Comfort of your Home ?

Multicenter clinical trial of a home-use nonablative fractional laser device for wrinkle reduction.
Leyden J, Stephens TJ, Herndon JH Jr.
J Am Acad Dermatol. 2012 Nov;67(5):975-84. doi: 10.1016/j.jaad.2012.01.041. Epub 2012 Mar 3.

• Wrinkle treatment can consist of filler injections, chemical peels, and laser treatments. All three are usually performed by a medical doctor. However a laser device for home use has existed since 2012 (called PaloVia by Palomar).
• It is used like this:
  • active treatment phase: daily treatment
  • maintenance phase: twice-weekly treatments.
• The authors performed a study:
  • 124 subjects were included (36 were followed 5 months after completion of the maintenance phase and 90 followed-up until the completion of the mainteanance phase)
  • results showed improvement by at least 1 grade on the Fitzpatrick wrinkle scale score
    • in 90% of subjects having completed the active phase.
    • in 79% of subjects having completed the maintenance phase
    • the most common side-effect was temporary redness after the treatment.

• Comment: it is interesting to know of device which can be used at home. However there is still very little data in the scientific literature (we did not find as of today randomized case-control studies (the Gold standard with regards to scientific evidence)).

Contributors

Dr Christophe Hsu – dermatologist. Geneva, Switzerland