Page 263 - Blog Posts v1

Your skin ‘type’ (according to the Fitzpatrick Scale) does not change when your colour does. It is not unusual for clients/patients to return for treatments with a different skin colour. In fact, it is perfectly normal – but their skin type remains the same, at all times.
What makes this situation even more strange, is that most laser/IPL treatments don’t even deliver UV light energy, thereby rendering the Fitzpatrick number completely redundant.
Skin Colour Scale
It would be much more useful if there was a readily accessible skin colour scale, rather than a ‘reaction to UV light’ scale. In the past such a scale existed – this was the ‘von Luschan Chromatic Scale’. This scale was developed to identify racial skin colours and used 36 opaque glass slides to ‘measure’ the skin colour. Unfortunately, this method was not very accurate with too many discrepancies and it was abandoned in the middle of the
20th century.
Melanin Concentration = Skin Colour
What is needed is a device which can measure the concentration of melanin (skin colour), at any particular site, on any particular day, just prior to laser/IPL treatment. My colleague, PA
Mike’s Blog Posts 263