Intense Pulsed Light (IPL) Treatment to Reduce Spots on the Face

At Clarus Dermatology, we see a lot of patients for IPL treatment to reduce the number of brown and red spots on their skin. Contrary to what you might think, the L in IPL does not stand for laser but rather light. IPL is short for Intense Pulsed Light; the treatment involves a very high-powered broadband light – imagine a really bright flashlamp.

IPL is an incredibly powerful device that can burn the skin with relative ease, which means that it can be quite dangerous in untrained hands – for this reason it is one of the most litigated cosmetic procedures. We always recommend seeing a board-certified dermatologist for your skin care needs and IPL is absolutely no exception.

For this patient, Dr. Neil Shah personally performed the entire procedure using two skilled passes of the light at a relatively high energy setting in a single treatment to achieve the results that you see in the images.

If you were to seek out an IPL treatment at a medical spa or with a non-dermatologist, it might require 4 to 6 separate treatments to achieve the results that often fall short of what you see here. The reason for this is that experience, training and knowledge matter when selecting the optimal device and settings to achieve a good result.

In the Pre-Operation and 30 Days Post-Operation images, we have circled a few areas with color effects to show the substantial reduction in brown and red spots following this single IPL treatment.