In the past few months, several well-informed pigmentation patients have asked me in clinic or online, “I heard that the picosecond laser is here, is it easier to remove the spots on my face?” Indeed, in August this year, CCTV reported that the famous artist Fan Bingbing went to Taiwan to receive the most advanced laser beauty program, picosecond laser (called picosecond laser in mainland China), and posted a photo of her face on her Weibo, experiencing a new tool for skin purification and whitening, and this event instantly became the focus of the beauty field. Some people may ask whether the picosecond laser is really as amazing as the legend, and why it is so amazing. Here, it is necessary to explain it to you one by one. Why is it called picosecond laser? Picosecond is a unit of time, 1 picosecond = 10-3 nanoseconds = 10-6 microseconds = 10-9 milliseconds == 10-12 seconds, so look at picosecond is not a super instant thing? Most of the laser equipment currently used in medical aesthetics is nanosecond, if it becomes picosecond, what does it bring to our beauty lovers? Simply put, the laser can find the pigmentation more accurately and crush the pigment particles more thoroughly, while the normal skin is intact. What pigmentation can be removed by picosecond laser? Picosecond laser can work on both epidermal and dermal pigmentation, that is to say, freckles, age spots, coffee spots, brown spots, nevus of Ota, etc., and even tattoos have obvious and fast results. Then can it treat melasma, which is difficult and stubborn to treat at present? The answer is yes. Let’s look at the characteristics of picosecond laser: because it is a super instantaneous and fast destruction of pigment, so that only very low energy is needed to act on melanin, it can slowly and gently improve melasma without the occurrence of more serious melasma after treatment. Why is it possible to remove spots and rejuvenate skin in one? This is because of another feature of the picosecond laser: it can use a special treatment mode, which can generate small shock waves in the skin, thus activating the repair mechanism and regenerating the skin, so that both whitening and rejuvenation can be combined. Seeing this, do you think the picosecond laser is omnipotent, even melasma is broken? In fact, it is not. For melasma treatment, picosecond laser obviously has its advantages, but there are still a lot of unsolved problems that need to be studied, observed and perfected. As one of the two units (Shanghai Jiuxian Hospital and Nanjing Institute of Dermatology) that first introduced picosecond laser in mainland China, not all of the melasma patients we have treated since the end of August this year have been effective. In addition, whether all the effective patients can keep it for a long time and how long they can keep it, these are the things that need time to test. It is worth affirming that the emergence of picosecond laser has brought hope to the majority of melasma patients that they can get rid of pigmentation and rejuvenate their skin at the same time, which was difficult to do in the past. We look forward to another gospel brought to us by the progress of technology!