Treatment of scars

Keloid scars are manifestations of abnormal healing and excessive skin fibrosis, characterized by persistent growth beyond the initial wound area, involving the surrounding normal skin and subcutaneous tissue, and appearing as nodular, striated, lamellar, or webbed masses that are hard, tough, and/or congested above the skin surface. There are many ways to treat keloids, such as surgery, radiation therapy, compression therapy, and pharmacotherapy (intra-lesion hormone injections) alone or in combination. However, since keloid scars are resistant to treatment and have a high recurrence rate, a comparison of the efficacy and recurrence rate of combined surgical and non-surgical treatments was performed based on the clinical data of keloid patients, and the results showed that the efficacy of combined surgical radiotherapy was significantly better than non-surgical treatments, and improved the cure rate and reduced the recurrence rate. The following is an article-by-article description of the above treatment methods: I. Surgery. As the name implies, it is a one-time traditional surgery, which is generally an outpatient surgery, using local anesthesia, with less intraoperative bleeding, and does not affect normal life after surgery. However, after surgery, attention should be paid to the tension of the incision, and at the same time, aesthetics should be taken into account, so the ultra-reduced fine suture technique is generally used to create zero-tension healing conditions, to solve the lesion and at the same time achieve the purpose of restoring the appearance. However, the recurrence rate of surgical scar removal alone is very high, so patients usually need to receive radiation therapy within 24-48 hours of surgical scar removal as an adjunctive treatment to prevent recurrence. Receiving radiation therapy can inhibit local angiogenesis and reduce inflammatory cytokines, as well as inhibit fibroblast production and reduce collagen synthesis, thus inhibiting the recurrence of keloid scars. It can be said that radiation therapy is an indispensable adjuvant treatment for keloid excision. Second, injection therapy. There are many patients with red, itchy and painful scars. For this group of patients, the fastest way to relieve the symptoms is scar injections. This treatment method can inhibit fibroblast proliferation and inhibit the process of collagen formation, accelerate collagen breakdown, reduce the accumulation of extracellular matrix, and reduce local inflammation and other reactions. Third, compression therapy. The use of various pressure-applying materials and devices to treat scars with continuous compression. The mechanism of this treatment is to reduce blood flow to the scar, causing hypoxia to the scar tissue, inducing cell death, and explaining collagen. Currently, there are many ways to treat scars, each with its own advantages and disadvantages, and it is necessary to weigh the various treatments in the clinical setting to achieve a personalized and comprehensive treatment of multiple methods.