Lots of cosmetics companies have advertised their products as being able to replace and reproduce the effects of medical procedures such as Botox, dermal injections, and lasers. There have always been skin-care products making absurd claims that were absolutely not possible or even remotely true. No skin-care product can remotely work like a medical corrective procedure. But now there are companies selling small hand-held machines claiming they can replace what laser hair removal treatments physicians are licensed to do. But do they work? The answer is yes and maybe.
Yes, they do have ability to reduce hair growth and when combined with shaving and tweezing during intervals net fairly impressive results. But do they work as well as the lasers used in doctors’ offices? Maybe, but it’s hard to be certain. Because so much of the research about laser hair removal is sponsored by the companies who sell the machines the studies are questionable. Plus, if you go to a physician’s office and ask about lasers for hair removal they will always have a strong bias about the machines they own or rent. I have yet to see an exception to that axiom.
Of the research that does exist, it seems of all the things you can buy to test against the claim are these hand-held, at-home lasers for hair removal. Some of them are almost identical to those used by physicians. For example, TRIA is an 810 nanometer diode laser with research showing it can reduce hair growth. The claims go beyond the pale, but you should see some percentage of hair reduction, just not as much as they claim.
One claim about these machines to ignore is the part where they brag about their FDA status of being a Class I medical device, which is often used by companies wanting to make their machines sound more impressive than they are. To keep it in perspective, according to the FDA, Class I devices are subject to the least regulatory control. They present minimal potential for harm to the user and that’s about all that classification represents. Examples of Class I devices include elastic bandages, examination gloves, and hand-held surgical instruments such as scalpels or dental scrapers. Class I devices are exempt from any notification of efficacy.
Using the term laser is clever, too, because even the flashlight pointers used to project a red light during slide presentations are referred to as lasers. As a term, lasers do not have to be related to the medical world.
My recommendation? Go ahead and give these at-home laser devices a try. The results from home-use devices are decent (some would argue impressive) but still inferior to office – based lasers and light devices.
(Sources: Seminars in Cutaneous Medicine and Surgery, December 2008, pages 292-300; and Lasers in Surgery and Medicine, July 2007, pages 476-493.)