Medical facials in Alpharetta
A medical facial is built around active ingredients and extraction rather than relaxation, and it is customized to your skin on the day rather than to a menu item. It is the treatment we most often recommend first for congested or reactive skin, because it lets us see how your skin behaves before committing to anything with downtime or a needle.
What it is
The appointment is a sequence rather than a product: cleansing, an enzyme or acid step chosen for what your skin is doing that day, manual extraction where extraction is warranted, and a finishing step matched to how the skin responded to the first three. Nothing about that sequence is fixed in advance, and the aesthetician changes it mid-appointment based on what she is seeing.
The diagnostic value is the part that is hard to sell and easy to underrate. An hour of working on skin with progressively stronger steps reveals its tolerance, its reactivity, its true congestion load and where its barrier is weak — information that decides whether a peel or a device treatment is appropriate at all, and which no consultation on its own produces.
What it feels like
Comfortable for most of it. The extraction phase is the exception: firm pressure on individual lesions, briefly uncomfortable, and worse in areas with a lot of congestion. Sixty minutes, and people usually describe it as far more clinical and far less soporific than a spa facial.
Downtime
None to two days. Pinkness for an hour or two. Where extraction was extensive, small red marks at those points for a day or two, and occasionally a brief apparent flare over the following few days as congestion that was already forming comes to the surface.
How long it lasts
Four to six weeks, which is why it suits a monthly rhythm and why it is the anchor of our membership tiers. It is maintenance and diagnosis rather than a course with an endpoint.
Who it’s for — and who it isn’t
A good fit
- Congested or reactive skin where nobody yet knows how it behaves under treatment.
- Mild inflammatory breakouts and the barrier problems that keep them recurring.
- Anyone new to the practice who would rather start with something reversible and low-risk before booking anything with downtime.
Not a fit
- Moderate to severe or cystic acne. That needs prescription treatment, and a course of facials would cost you months while the scarring accumulates. We will say so and give you what to look for.
- Anyone expecting a single facial to change texture, scarring or pigment. It treats what is on the surface today.
- Skin currently reacting badly to something — we will use the appointment to work out what, and treat it gently rather than as planned.
Who performs it here
Nia Ellison
LE, CLT
Lead Medical Aesthetician
Cosmetic laser services are delegated by, and performed under the supervision of, Anita Rao, MD, in accordance with Georgia Composite Medical Board requirements.
Bree Salazar
LE
Medical Aesthetician
Performs delegated treatments under the medical direction and standing orders of Anita Rao, MD.
What it costs
A single published rate per appointment, and it is the one treatment here where the price does not vary with what we decide to do — because varying it would create an incentive to escalate mid-appointment. Included monthly in two of the three membership tiers.
Questions about medical facials
How is this different from a spa facial?
The actives are stronger, extraction is a real part of it rather than a token one, and the appointment is customized as it goes rather than performed to a script. It is also less relaxing, which is a fair trade for the fact that something changes.
Will it make me break out?
Sometimes, briefly. Extraction can bring congestion to the surface that was already on its way, and it can look like a flare for a few days. We tell people this beforehand, because otherwise the reasonable conclusion is that the treatment caused it.
How often should I have one?
Every four to six weeks if you are treating something, less often as maintenance. It is the treatment that suits a rhythm rather than a course, which is why it anchors the memberships.