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How we best diminish scars is an important question as scars will in almost all cases result from any cuts and injuries we experience. Three types of scars cover the full range of how they can surface on one's skin. Atrophic, pitted scars will leave the cut or injury indented. Hypertrophic, raised scars grow above the injury or cut but not extending beyond its borders. Next there are keloid scars. These raise beyond the edges of the injury or cut to regions of the skin that were not originally injured. This is the hardest sort of scar to treat for several reasons.

To start with the sources of keloid scars can vary from cuts to piercings to burns to inflammatory reactions triggered by acne. Second they may only begin to form after a prolonged timespan has elapsed since the original injury. The third and most dispiriting difficulty is removing the scar successfully through surgery will very easily cause a new keloid scar to develop over the surgery wound!

These characteristics of this sort of scar call for a deeper investigation as to how to properly heal them.

Finding an Effective Treatment for Keloids

Doctors often use additional procedures to accompany surgery that diminish that chances of a post keloid treatment recurrence. The principal techniques associated with this approach are compression therapy and steroid injections.

Steroid injections can be used both before, during, or after the sugery with the outcome of flattening out the scar. Long-acting cortisone (steroid) shots are injected on average one time a month with the difference in size visible in three to six months time. The good part is the cortisone reduces the size of the scar with only a very small amount of it getting into the bloodstream.

Compression bandages are believed to work from limiting oxygen to the scar which reduces the biological process that leads to the creation of keloids. They are customized made garments that are made so they are worn twenty four hours a day and changed once a week for a period of 6 to 18 months. They have a track record of successfully decreasing the size of the scar but the time and effort is very consuming.

How to Remove Keloids Without the Use of Surgery