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So, do chemical peels work for acne cars? And we see all sorts of chemical peels. There’s the at home variety, which tend to be weaker, hopefully weaker because you don’t want to be doing something too strong with your skin.
Really strong chemical peels that can be done in a doctor’s office under local anesthesia, and even some chemical peels that have required general anesthesia, like some of the phenol peels and things that are that strong.
So, do they help get rid of acne scar? In my opinion, I actually don’t think chemical peels are the best way of getting rid of acne scar, unless you do a special modification. And we’ll talk about that.
So light acne peels and light peels in general, I think they’re great for texture. I don’t think they seem to help with acne scar for some reason. Acne scars, I think should also be called acne depressions.
That’s where the skin goes in versus a raised scar. And because of that depth, I don’t feel like superficial appeals are going to really improve that texture to a significant degree, where patients are going to see a big different, especially if we’re talking about like a salicylic acid peel or some sort of healthy hydroxy peel.
The other peels you could talk about are these really strong peels like phenol peels. And again, I’ve seen lots of patients get full on phenol peels and their skin hasn’t improved that much. It seems to help better with lines and wrinkles than it does seem to help with acne scars.
So what can you do if you are concerned about acne scars and you want to do a chemical peel route? Well, I think the best approach is to consider using something called a CROSS TCA approach.
And a CROSS TCA approach is where you’re going to use a sharp wooden instrument, which is going to basically poke into the scar. And you’re going to dip this instrument into a 100% TCA.
Now, if you were to put a 100% TCA on your entire face, basically you’d be in the burn. It’s too strong. But because you’re only putting this within the scar itself, it tends to have less issues.
There’s a modification to this approach which is going to be called pinpoint irradiation, which uses a CO2 laser. I favor that over CROSS TCA, but that being said, if you’re looking for a chemical peel solution, I actually think it’s going to be a 100% TCA with a CROSS technique.
