Treatments for keloids and hypertrophic scars

Posted on June 30, 2011

So in talking about scars, there are three basic things which lead to keloids and hypertrophic scars:

Most of the treatments out there are aimed at these.  Bad scars are not seen immediately.  It would be unusual to see a scar elevating and looking bad until a month or more out of surgery.  I see all my patients back at 3 months (don’t miss that visit!) and the primary reason? To see if I see any inklings of poor scarring.  The initial signs are subtle, but there.

The best treatment for scars is prevention.  At my recent meeting with many who are doing research on scarring (so I would consider them quite the experts) they recommended doing what I already do. 

Even when you do this, you can still form bad scars.  What do you do then?  None of these are ideal.  A lot of times it may be best to cut out the scar and retry, particularly if the first time the injury was traumatic (skinned knee), infected, or under a lot of tension to close.