Easy Does It.(skin resurfacing)

Byline: editor: Sarah Brown

In the past, laser resurfacing has been epically harsh or barely noticeable. Catherine Piercy reports on the breakthrough that's finally getting it right.

It's a bright winter morning when I arrive at dermatologist Deborah Sarnoff, M.D.'s, Park Avenue laser center for a sneak peek at the Next Big Thing in dermatology. My mind is racing with visions of the latest high-tech wizardry: 3-D laser-light goggles, wrinkle-obliterating bodysuits, skin-searing wands. You know .

So imagine my surprise when Sarnoff swings open the door to a pristine white treatment room and reveals . . . an eggplant, perched in a reclining chair atop its own paper surgical gown.

"I know, I know," she says with a laugh. "But you've got to see this."

And then, like the Jetsons -esque hostess of some far-out futuristic culinary show, she aims a nearby laser head at that dark, ripe flesh, and fires, searing a square grid of tiny, tightly packed pink dots onto its surface (and filling the air with the scent of cooked eggplant).

What Sarnoff has just demonstrated is fractional carbon dioxide resurfacing, and it may be the biggest breakthrough in laser skin care in nearly a decade. The spot-eradicating, line-smoothing results, swears Sarnoff, are good enough "to turn a prune-face" back into a taut, juicy plum, and they have the most conservative dermatologists feeling giddy with excitement.