Laser therapy in scar treatment

Scarring is a permanent skin defect occurring as a consequence of tissue damage. Some scars disappear quickly, while others stay for good. When they appear in visible parts of the body, particularly such as the face, they can cause a lot of worries and mental discomfort. Fortunately, aesthetic medicine offers many dedicated scar treatment methods.

How are scars formed?
There are many possible reasons for a scar to develop. Typically, scars remain on the body as an unwanted consequence of accidents in which your skin got damaged. For example, scars are formed after burns or cuts deep enough to prevent proper healing. The type of scar depends on the level of damage caused to the skin and on the actual healing process. The longer and more difficult the healing, the more probable a scar is to develop, often with extra discoloration.
Another frequent problem is post-surgery scarring, including scars formed after plastic surgery procedures. Some of the patients at our Clinic have had acne in the past. Unfortunately, acne lesions often leave staining and scarring marks. It is not always possible to prevent their occurrence through proper acne skin care; therefore, appropriate procedures are the only solution.

Scar treatment
Scar therapy depends on the type of scar. They can be divided into several categories and a different group of procedures will be dedicated to each. The most common form is ordinary scarring, hard and slightly thicker at first and becoming similar to the adjacent skin tissue with time. They usually do not need any corrections unless they are located in a visible place, for example on the face. Hypertrophic scars are more advanced; they are formed as a result of skin healing process disruption, with excessive formation of new tissue. They are hard, convex, protruding beyond the skin surface. They can appear as keloid scars as well. Atrophic scarring (sunken scarring) is the next type, forming at the point of skin damage without the skin producing enough collagen to rebuild the missing tissue. They look like tiny recesses, often noticeable in patients with a history of acne.

Fractional laser treatment for scarring
Fractional lasers are innovative aesthetic medicine devices. There are a lot of clinical studies dedicated to the efficiency of this method in scar treatment. At our clinic, we use eCO2 fractional laser from Lutronic, which is an ablative laser machine. The laser produces a high energy beam of light, which is delivered deep into the skin, causing controlled damage to skin cells, with unaffected structures remaining around them that cause the skin to regenerate and stimulate collagen synthesis processes.

How is a scar removed with a laser?
The laser scar removal procedure itself is quite simple and fast, yet it guarantees a long-term effect. Anesthetic cream is applied on the skin at the point of treatment, to give the patient more comfort while the physician operates the laser. Local swelling and redness can continue after the treatment. The skin surface can also become more rough. These issues disappear without any intervention after a few days, and the skin regeneration process becomes more intensive. Depending on the scar size and form, a series of treatments should be applied at 4 to 6 weeks' intervals.