How to select the right skin care centre to have laser or IPL treatments

Questions to assist the public in choosing a good skin care centre to have laser, IPL, peels or permanent make-up

by Philippa Crichton

LASER
Skin care therapists should not be working with lasers on any level unless employed by a doctor or are working in a doctor’s rooms, under his direct supervision. LASER technology is far more complicated and dangerous than IPL technology and hence this recommendation implemented by the department of health.

IPL
Make no mistake that IPL treatments can be extremely damaging as shown in the program on Carte Blanche, but if the following guidelines are followed, the public should be safe, as the benefits of IPL far outweigh the negatives.

1. What are the specifications of the machine? Almost every time I ask a client what machine was used, they have no idea, this is imperative to the success of the treatment.
1. Does the machine use a square pulse? This guarantees a constant energy will be supplied to the area, with no peaks or troughs.
2. Does the machine offer a filtering system which removes harmful wavelengths? This will prevent the water in the skin boiling and therefore exposing the skin to potential burns.
3. Does the machine have a CE and FDA stamp of approval:
   There are two “classes” of IPL systems are available:
• those which have been tested for safety by accredited, independent testing facilities, and have obtained approval in accordance with the EU “Medical Device Directive” . Such systems carry the CE mark followed by the identification number for the authorized test company, the so-called notified body.
• those which have not been subjected to such third party test and approval procedures and are labelled with the standard CE mark without a number. This CE mark is equivalent to that found on normal electrical equipment such as a hair dryer.

A system with a CE approval in accordance with the Medical Device Directive provides certainty that:
• The system has undergone stringent safety tests and has passed those tests
• The manufacturer has documented that the system can perform the stated clinical treatments efficiently and that possible risks and side effects are of an acceptable level taken the obtained results into account.

To obtain a Medical CE approval a manufacturer thus need to specify the "intended use", and document that the system actually can perform the treatments listed. Consequently, when considering systems carrying only the general CE mark, care should be taken to obtain documentation that the equipment under consideration can indeed perform the treatments claimed.
4. Individual adjustment of pulse duration and fluency provides for more efficient treatments, and allows for treating a wider variety of patients (different skin types and degrees of pigmentation). Systems allowing parameters to be chosen/adjusted based on ‘patient parameter’ selection further reduce the risk that wrong settings are used.

This may sound very complicated, but for the man in the street it is very simple, if the person cannot answer these questions or has to get back to him, then don’t go there as they obviously don’t know there machine.


2. What qualifications does the person doing the treatment have? Unfortunately due to the fact there is no legislation in this regard the suppliers of this equipment have no pre-requisites, in other words, they will supply to anyone who has the money to purchase. Usually the parent companies have set them targets and in order for them to retain their agency they have to sell a certain number of machines. This means they do not care who they sell to, so people with poor qualification or no qualifications are purchasing these machines and it’s impossible to train these people in the time allocated for training with the equipment i.e. most suppliers only offer 2 to 4 day training. If the suppliers were offering a proper training, this would mean at least 100 hours of training, then this would not be such a problem, but not one supplier offers this.
3. How much experience has the person doing the treatment had? There is always a learning curve when starting with a new piece of equipment and its practice which makes perfect, so ensure that you are not within the first 20 clients being treated.
4. Look at the person’s portfolio of evidence. Any professional skin therapist will take before and after pictures of every procedure she does, so should be able to show you an album or computer with a lot of pictures.
5. Ask for referrals and speak to clients that have been done by the person. Get telephone numbers to speak to other people done by that therapist, but bear in mind that they will only give you the successes so this is why this is one of the last things to follow.
6. Be careful of one machine does all as there is no miracle machine in this market, the more multi-functional the machines the more chance of one of the modalities being sub-standard. An IPL machine is designed to do permanent hair reduction, pigmentation and vascular lesions. IPL will not remove tattoos, nor do leg capillaries or remove wrinkles, there are other machines for this purpose.

In summary for a successful treatment you need the best possible equipment of which there are only about 5 outstanding machines available in South Africa, you need the therapist to be well qualified, with good experience and a good portfolio of evidence, who does not promise you the earth plus more!

The ideal will be for anyone working with these dangerous pieces of equipment has to belong to a register which will give the public the knowledge that they will be safe.

IPL can be used for the following conditions:

• Hair removal
• Sun damage induced dyspigmentation and vascular changes
• Poikiloderma of Civatte (Poikiloderma: Extra pigmentation of the skin demonstrating a variety of shades and associated with widened capillaries (telangiectasia) in the affected area.)
• Acne Rosacea
• Broken capillaries/telangiectases
• Vascular and pigmented birth marks

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