What procedures can be used to treat acne?

There are a number of procedures that can be performed in a doctor's office to treat acne, i.e. chemical peels, microdermabrasion (i.e. a technique that helps repair facial skin), dermabrasion (i.e. a method of surgical scraping of the skin’s top layers), laser and laser-like procedures, electro­cautery, cryotherapy (i.e. whereby surface skin lesions are frozen) with either liquid nitrogen or CO2 slush and surgery to remove acne scars.

What is the right acne treatment? This will depend on our skin type, how much acne scarring we have, how active our acne is and how much we can spend on these acne treatments. Usually, those acne treatments will need to be done several times to get the desired results with its main­tenance treatments in order to have lasting improvement over time. It is safe if done properly and can be done along with a topical or oral regimen to maximize our acne treatment results.

It is noted that chemical peels have gained the popularity to treat acne and to minimize scarring from acne. What follows is a list of the most commonly used chemical peels:

• glycolic (α-hydroxy acid, fruit acid),
• Jessner's solution,
• salicylic acid (β-hydroxy acid) and
• trichloroacetic acid.