At the end of the year, it is customary for people to do a year’s summary. I am no exception. After a cursory look at the surgical registry, I was satisfied with the year’s labor. As a surgeon, it has been a fulfilling year. But as I studied these patients closely, I was not at all happy with my year’s work.
Among the more than five hundred patients, young people in their twenties accounted for more than ninety percent, and many were college students, graduate students, and some hadn’t even graduated from high school. Why are keloids mostly young people? Is it a genetic factor? No, there is almost no family history of keloid scarring. If it is not genetic, then what is the reason for the scarring of the flowers of our country?
To answer this question, we have to analyze the cause of the keloid. Among these patients, except for the auricular keloid patients who have a relatively clear history of surgical injury (ear piercing), few of the other keloids on the face, chest, shoulders, back, etc. have a history of trauma or surgery, and local skin infection is a cause that almost all patients can think of. So, what makes these people susceptible to skin infections again? Why do they develop skin infections that cause keloids?
Although I have not had the time to study these issues systematically, in talking with some of my patients, I feel deeply that acne and other skin infections that cause keloids seem to be a given for some patients living in this day and age. Our living environment is changing, our eating habits are changing, our living habits are changing, our social psychology is changing. Instead of becoming healthier, we are becoming less and less healthy. Young people, in particular, are at great risk of disease if they are raised in this unhealthy environment and no one tells them what is healthy or if someone points it out and they take it for granted.
In fact, for the human body, not only water, atmosphere or soil is the living environment, but also diet, life, emotions and all other factors related to health are the living environment. This is called “environmental stress”. Studies have proven that environmental stress affects the ability to fight infection and immune regulation, which is closely related to the formation of acne and other skin infections and keloids.
Therefore, to prevent acne and other skin infections and the formation of keloids, we must first avoid “environmental stress”. Not only should the living environment, such as water and atmosphere, be free of pollution, but also diet, life, emotions and other factors closely related to health should not feed the body with bad information. To achieve this goal, the most important thing is to do health education.
While talking to one patient, I talked to him about the importance of healthy living and the value of surgery in the treatment of keloids. In fact, it is not the doctor’s wish to do surgery because, personally, there will always be times when he or she cannot do it. What doctors would love to see is to have no more keloid patients before they can’t do surgery. What is the point of doing a good surgery if there are more and more keloid patients? This is why I am writing this article at the beginning of the New Year. That is also why, in the next year, I will be doing, not just surgery, but health education about keloid scars.