Injury or wounds in any part of the body leads to scar, once they heal. It can appear as a mild discolouration or a very big thick ugly looking scar. Keloids or hypertrophic scars result from exaggerated wound healing response and appear as very thick, large growths. They usually appear over earlobes, chest, upperarms etc. On top of giving you an unsightly look, scars also result in itching, pain, anxiety, depression and on top of all, disruption of daily activities. Facial scars in particular affects your self esteem by a large scale, bringing your confidence down enough, making it hard for you to engage in social activities that you always loved to be a part of. Scars can be dark, red, itchy and painful.Scars are usually the after-effects of trauma, burns, surgery, pimples, chicken pox and various other diseases.
Treating scars.
Treatment of a scar depends on its size, shape, thickness and age. Fresh thin scars resulting from trauma or surgery can be treated with topical medicines like silicon/polysiloxane creams.It takes around 3-6 months to improve the appearance of the scar with regular applications.Post-pimple scars can be treated with various procedures like chemical peeling, microdermabrasion, micro needling,laser treatments using pulsed dye laser, fractional laser and co2 laser. Usually done at monthly intervals for at least 4-5 times, they stimulate collagen production in the deeper part of the skin making scars less visible.
Depending on scar’s shape minor procedures like subcision,punch elevation & punch grafting can also be done,mostly for post pimples & chicken pox scars- Dermal fillers produce immediate results and are used to correct depressed scars, but the results are not permanent, so injections need to be repeated once in an year. Keloids can be managed with intra lesional injections, silicon gel sheets, Pulsed dye laser ,fractional lasers etc. The outcome is always better when we combine different modalities depending on the nature of the scar.
No scar can ever be completely removed; always leaves a trace, but their visibility can be lessened by the above mentioned means.