The Complete guide to Acne Scar Treatment
Part I — 5 tips to plan your scar removal treatment.
Pimples are a problem, but the scars they leave behind are a much bigger problem. The best way to treat a scar is by preventing it, and that is by treating the acne, early and well.
Now, scar revision can be done in many ways. But before we discuss the way, the first step is to see what can be achieved for a given person. Here is what you should know, and what you should realistically expect.
Results vary.
A treatment option considered the‘best’acne scar treatment, which gives great results for one person, may not work at all, for another person.
To get this, we need to understand how most acne scar treatments work. They induce collagen which comes in to fill up the scars. Since each person’s body makes collagen in very different ways, results are not the same for two different individuals, even for the exact same treatment.
Scar removal treatments take time.
In fact, we call this process — scar revision. Revision describes the process more closely than scar removal. If you remember an injury from a cut, you will recall that the scar looks very different in the first month after the injury, to a year later. That is the process of collagen remodeling. This takes time.
Whether we use a laser treatment for acne scars, or a surgical option like subcision, the process of scar remodeling takes time.
More than one session is often required.
This is a very common expectation that the scars be removed completely, with the very first treatment session. The collagen we discussed above, is not that easy to induce, at one go. We need to induce collagen which then undergoes remodeling to lift up the scar — in stages.
Depending on the acne scar type, the number of sessions can be a few to many. But it is realistic to expect a minimum of 3 to 6 sessions, for moderate scarring, and much more for the severe types.
More than one treatment option is required.
There are several types of acne scars, and so to address them, there needs to be several treatment options.
Acne scars are not in a single dimension, and the remodeling has to be induced at different levels. So it is useful to combine more than one procedure, like a subcision for deeper scars, a filler for contour deficits, and a laser for resurfacing with PRP added for faster healing and so on.
Sometimes, it may be possible to combine these treatments in the same session, or they may be done in a staged way.
Plan for adequate downtime.
Except for the really superficial scars, and predominantly pigmented pimple scars — all other grades need deeper treatments. And this is usually associated with some downtime. The surgical options may have some bruising as well, which may take quite some time to settle down. Some resurfacing treatments may also cause temporary pigmentation, especially in darker skinned persons.
So unlike a Botox, which is the prime example of a no downtime procedure, or a lunchtime procedure, here you may have to plan and schedule your treatment.
Now that you have the basics of planning through, let us look at the scar treatments in detail. This guide will take through the different treatments available for acne scar treatment. We will look at the way treatments are chosen for different scar types and skin types, and then the processes themselves in detail.
