What is the difference between a chemical peel and a laser treatment for fine lines and wrinkles?

Dr. Irwin
February 16, 2011
What is difference in improvement between a chemical peel and a laser treatment? Do they both work to treat wrinkles and fine lines?

This is a good question because I think many are puzzled by this also. I’d like to give you the broad differences and then links to two places in the site for more information. Since you mention fine lines and wrinkles, I’ll stick to lasers that are more for those problems rather than lasers for dilated blood vessels or brown spots.

The answer which works best depends on several things.  Peels are usually classified as light, medium or deep.  Deep peels are rarely done now because they have an increased risk of scarring or white areas occuring, compared to lasers.   Light peels do very little for fine lines or wrinkles – they just don’t go deep enough.  So your best option is either a medium depth peel or lasers.

 If you really just have fine lines, then 1-2 medium depth peels will give you fairly similiar results to 1-2 Fraxel Restore laser treatments, for example.  There are some differences which I’ll let you read about in the links.  If you are over 50 or have a lot of sun damage for your age and wrinkles, then better for you would be the fractionated CO2 lasers.    Hope this helps,  Dr. I

Dr. Brandith Irwin, MD

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