Microneedling and laser skin treatments both serve the same purpose of skin resurfacing but both are very different procedures, with common goals of treating signs of aging, minimizing acne scarring, and improving the general skin tone and texture. The two treatments create controlled wounds on the skin to stimulate a natural response from the body but they vary in their side effects, costs and downtime. Both procedures lead to the increased production of collagen to leave behind firm skin without any scarring and fine lines.

During a fractional laser treatment the laser burns the epidermis to create controlled wounds on the top layer of the skin that vary in size. Laser therapy is more invasive and therefore the skin’s natural reaction is heightened causing more pronounced redness and swelling in the treatment area. With a laser resurfacing treatment, anyone with darker skin are at a higher risk of skin discoloration because the laser heat energy can damage the melanocytes making it release too much or too little pigment causing uneven skin discoloration. Microneedling is gentle on the surface of the skin when creating uniform controlled wounds to activate the body’s natural skin renewal process. Unlike in laser treatment, micro-needling does not do any harm to the melanocytes and it leaves the epidermis intact without damage, which leads to faster healing, much less down time, and fewer potential side effects.

Microneedling is also considerably more successful in breaking up existing scar tissue to replace it with new, healthy skin cells. Therefore, micro-needling may be the treatment of choice for acne and minimizing scarring.

Microneedling also tightens and lifts any skin laxity while reducing acne scars, fine lines, photo-aging, stretch marks, and body scars. The benefits of choosing microneedling, is that it is faster, less invasive procedure with much less discomfort than laser treatments, where some patients may find the heat of laser intolerable and somewhat painful. Laser treatment also causes visible redness and swelling which takes at least four days to go down, so the downtime following a laser skin resurfacing treatment is more than with micro-needling. Micro-needling generally has no side-effects but when micro-needling is coupled with radiofrequency at your skin clinic, you may expect some redness and puffiness but it will disappear within a day.

Are you curious to see what the Calista Skin and Laser Clinic can do for your skin? Request a consultation with one of our licensed estheticians online or by calling 817-488-3838.