Acne Scars: Surgical Treatments
While shallow acne scars will naturally fade over time as your skin exfoliates, deeper scars can sometimes stay with you for the rest of your life. Preventing these deep acne scars from happening means not trying to force buried cysts to the surface prematurely. Failed attempts at popping a deep pimple only make the area look worse, and even if you succeed, the pustule can leave an unsightly crater that may not go away so easily. Such marks are often worsened by picking.
Once you have a deep scar, there are very few alternatives apart from surgical treatments. You will need to see a dermatologist to determine which one is right for you. If your scars are not too serious, I would recommend the use a daily exfoliation scrub (such as St. Ives Apricot Scrub) to make the area heal evenly as fast as possible.
For surgical treatments, there are a few options depending on the severity of your scars. One of the most popular alternatives is a collagen injection. Collagen firms up the underlying skin, puffing-out the cells and thus evening out the area over time. An autologous fat transfer is a similar alternative, one in which some of your body’s fat is transferred to fill the problem area. Unfortunately, this process needs to be periodically repeated as your body eventually breaks down the fat.
Two surgical treatments that use a different approach are laser scar removal and dermabrasion. In both cases, the top layers of skin are peeled away to even the skin level so that scars are less noticeable. For both laser removal and dermabrasion (which uses a process similar to sanding) there are different levels of the treatment, but in the more serious cases these treatments can risk causing scars themselves.
In serious cases, deep acne scars may be treated via skin grafting, although this is not always a very serious matter, as small cases of grafting are done for things as simple as removing moles. An incision is made along the scarred area, and the surrounding skin is pinched and usually sewn together. On the downside, you may just end up replacing a crater scar with a line scar. In any case, you should consult a dermatologist to learn more about which treatment is right for you, and be patient with those cysts!
