If you have a scar, regardless of its size, you can’t help but focus on it. You feel like the only thing anyone can see when they look at you is your scar. Your scar doesn’t have to be the focal point of your face, though. Scar revision can help drastically improve the appearance of your scar – read on to learn more about this procedure.
What Is Scar Revision?
Scar revision is a medical procedure that improves or significantly reduces the appearance of scarring. Undergoing scar revision has the added benefit of restoring the skin’s function and correcting disfigurement due to an injury, wound or previous surgery.
Sometimes, you might hear the procedure referred to as “keloid revision,” “hypertrophic scar revision,” “scar repair” and “Z-plasty.”
Why Do People Undergo Scar Revision?
In order to understand why people choose to undergo scar revision, it’s important to know a little more about scarring.
A scar is a visible sign that a wound has healed. You can’t prevent them. Their development doesn’t follow predictable or routine patterns. Sometimes, scars don’t heal properly. A scar’s healing process depends on a number of factors that doctors still don’t entirely understand, although a scar’s healing seems to be related to skin tone as well as the area of the body where the scar is located.
Even when a scar heals the way it’s supposed to, it can still look unsightly. Your appearance can affect your self-esteem, and scar revision can make you feel more positive about the way you look.
What Is Involved in Scar Revision?
Your scarring will determine how your plastic surgeon will treat you. There are a variety of treatment options available.
Steroid applications and injections flatten and reduce the redness of hypertrophic and keloid scars. The doctor applies or injects steroids into the scar to break down the skin’s collagen. Another treatment option for keloid or hypertrophic scars is silicone gel sheets. These sheets also flatten those particular types of scars. The patient wears the sheets for 24 hours a day.
Dermabrasion evens the skin, which can reduce the appearance of scars. The health practitioner uses a rotating wire brush or a diamond wheel to remove the topmost layer of skin. Laser skin resurfacing performs the same function, only, as the name implies, it relies upon lasers.
Another method that plastic surgeons use is collagen injections. Collagen is a natural animal protein that raises or fills in sunken scars. One more non-surgical scar revision method is vascular lasers. It shrinks the blood vessels that feed the scar, fading red scars.
The doctor might also choose to employ tissue expansion, in which he or she inserts a “balloon” filled with saline solution underneath healthy skin to stretch it. After the skin stretches, the doctor surgically removes the scar. Yet another surgical scar revision method is a skin graft. During a skin graft, the surgeon takes healthy skin from one part of the body and transplants it to the scarred part of the body.
A third surgical scar revision method is Z-plasty. The doctor repositions the scar by cutting the skin around it into small triangular flaps and then shifts them along the natural lines and contours of your skin.
Are These Procedures Right for Me?
The only person who can determine whether you’re a candidate for scar revision treatment is a plastic surgeon. That being said, these procedures will be more suitable for some people than others.
Prospective patients should be in good health and not suffer from any pre-existing conditions.
Say Goodbye to Scars with Scar Revision Procedures
Are you sick of your scar? You might not have to live with it any longer. Set up a consultation about scar revision procedures at the Royal Centre of Plastic Surgery to learn how Dr. Kenneth Dickie can reduce the appearance of your scar.
Dr. Kenneth Dickie offers patients a personable approach to cutting-edge surgical and non-surgical procedures. We proudly offer plastic surgery services to Barrie, Collingwood, Sudbury, Orillia, Huntsville, Bracebridge and surrounding areas.
Fill out the form on the right to schedule a personal consultation with plastic surgeon Dr. Kenneth Dickie. Or call us at the phone number posted at the top of the page.