CASE 3: Before treatment → About 13 weeks later (2024-12-13 → 2025-03-15)

*Results may vary depending on skin type, pigment depth, sun exposure, inflammatory response, and lifestyle factors.

In simple terms, even though melasma and dark spots may look similar on the surface, they are not always approached in exactly the same way.

Some pigmentation spreads more broadly and makes the overall skin tone look dull, while other spots appear more individually defined and stand out more clearly on the surface.

That is why, in cases like this, it is important not to group everything together simply as “pigmentation,” but to separate the broadly spread melasma-like areas from the more defined, spot-like lesions.

In actual practice, the first step is to determine whether the skin is mainly affected by melasma, mainly by dark spots, or by a mixture of both, and then plan the treatment intensity and interval accordingly.

For this reason, a more realistic approach is often: diagnosis → distinguishing tone-focused treatment from spot treatment → checking the progress → adjusting as needed.

When reviewing before-and-after photos, it is also better not to rely on just one image, but to look at both the front and side views together.

The front view is useful for seeing how much clearer the overall skin tone has become and how much the dullness in the central part of the face has improved.

The side view is helpful for assessing in more detail how much the brown pigmentation around the cheekbone area has lightened, how much the density of the residual pigment has decreased, and how much more even the skin appears overall.

Especially in melasma and dark spot treatment, not every area improves at the same speed, so it is helpful to review both the intermediate progress and the final result together.

Some areas may start to look brighter earlier, while in other areas the borders may soften more gradually over time.

Post-treatment care does not need to be overly complicated.

It is usually better to pause potentially irritating home-care products such as scrubs, peeling pads, high-

concentration AHA/BHA products, and retinol for about 1 to 2 weeks, and to focus mainly on moisturization and sun protection, which helps make the recovery course more stable.

Melasma in particular tends to be relatively sensitive to ultraviolet exposure, heat, friction, and inflammation, so if post-treatment care becomes inconsistent, the skin may start to look dull again or the pigment may seem to return.

*After treatment, temporary redness, warmth, dryness, flaking, scabbing, temporary darkening of pigmentation, or changes in redness or tone differences may occur.