MONDAY, June 23 (HealthDay News) -- In patients with sun-damaged skin, treatment with long-pulsed dye laser rejuvenation produces better outcomes than treatment with intense pulsed light, according to a report published online June 18 in Lasers in Surgery and Medicine.

Gitte F. Jorgensen, M.D., of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, and colleagues studied 20 female patients who received a series of three treatments at three-week intervals: half-face long-pulsed dye laser and half-face intense pulsed light. The researchers randomly assigned the interventions to the left and right sides.

The investigators found that the treatment with long-pulsed dye laser rejuvenation or intense pulsed light were just as effective at clearing irregular pigmentation and improving skin texture, but that the long-pulsed dye laser resulted in superior vessel clearance, significantly lower pain scores and greater overall patient satisfaction.

"To our knowledge, this is the first randomized controlled trial with a direct side-by-side comparison that examines efficacy and adverse effects of long-pulsed dye laser and intense pulsed light rejuvenation in a homogeneous group of patients," the authors state. "However, it might be possible that using an intense pulsed light-system with a cooling device, the results may have come out somewhat different. Therefore, the results from this study cannot be extended to other intense pulsed light-systems."

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