Chemical Peels specifically and predictably can improve skin wrinkles, texture, pigmentation and some degree of looseness. Chemical Peels can take many forms from very mild to very aggressive and are the time-honored treatment of most kinds of skin problems. They are customized to your anatomy, lifestyle. The basic features are how deep your skin problems are, and how deep you need to peel, and do you want to do this in one treatment or in several partial treatments.

At the low end of the spectrum are enzyme and herbal peels that can cause minor exfoliation and be performed by patients at home almost on a daily basis. The next level would be a light (superficial) epidermal peeling can be provided by glycolic peels.

Glycolic peels contain medical concentrations of glycolic enzymes that are administered in the office and need to be part of a program with frequent intervals initially, increasing the duration and concentration of glycolic as tolerated with each visit until a stable end point of improvement is obtained at which time maintenance is begun. These are comfortable and heal quickly so there is very little downtime. We have seen nice improvement in fine wrinkle lines, texture, and discoloration with even softening of medium depth wrinkle lines with this program.

The next level of peel offered in our office is the medium depth peel. The most popular product is low concentrations (15%) TCA (tri chloro acetic acid). There are many great indications for its usage. It is an excellent "refresher" minimal downtime peel that can be frequently treated safely repeated for cumulative benefits. We also like to offer it for use in the non-facial areas such as the chest, hands, and arms. This is also used to feather the edges of demarcation along and into the neck when the doctor uses a deeper (laser or phenol peel) treatments to the face. We suggest this as a "jump-start" to the patients on the bleaching program in which cases it works extremely well. It is an excellent stand-alone treatment for such things as the fine wrinkles of lower eyelids.