Fitzpatrick Scales

The Fitzpatrick Scale is a method of skin typing that measures and refers to different skin types’ tolerance to the sun’s burning rays. Dermatologists, plastic surgeons, and estheticians refer to this scale prior to performing any service. This information serves as an indicator for determining treatment selection, tolerance level, healing time, and end results.
The more natural pigment in the skin, the greater its resistance to sunburn and environmental skin damage. Although dark skin can suffer from both sunburn and sun damage, it has greater resistance to potential damage due to its pigment. The melanin in the skin provides a natural hereditary form of sunscreen. Darker skin types are much less likely to develop sun damage, sun-induced skin cancer, wrinkles, and solar elastosis, a lessening of elasticity in the tissues due to overexposure to sun.
The Fitzpatrick Scale types skin from the lightest, most susceptible to sunburn and sun damage to the darkest skin coloring, the most resistant to sunburn and cumulative sun damage.
Daily sunscreen protection should be worn regardless of coloring. This scare not only indicates sun damage susceptibility, but also serves as a scale of intrinsic sensitivity. While dark skin types can still be sensitive, thinner, type 1 and 2 tend to be more reactive to external and topical substances, including exposure to the environment, including sun, heat, cold, and wind.
These skin types may also be affected different by pigmentation disorders. hyper pigmentation is more likely to affect types 4-6 than the lighter skin types. Certain advanced skin treatments including Jessner’s exfoliation peels may irritate these skin types and cause or worsen pigmentation.
Asian and Hispanic skin types are very susceptible to hyper pigmentation problems. Any injury to the skin can result in h.p. darker skin types produce more melanin than Caucasian skin and are more reactive to stimulation and injures, including chemical insults from skin care products that are too strong for their skin. Pigmentation resulting from irritation or injury is called Postinflammatory hyper pigmentation (PIH).
The Scale


information from mildays standard text, picture from google images