What treatments are available for scar repair?

       “What goes around must leave a mark” is the best way to describe scars on the skin, which not only record unpleasant past events, but also remain on your face to continue to embarrass you.  In our daily life, permanent scars from trauma, burns and scalds caused by various accidents can be seen everywhere. Different causes and degrees of trauma may produce scars with different appearances, which are due to different degrees of collagen synthesis and degradation during the repair process after skin injury, and there is wound contracture and scar formation.  Factors such as wound infection during the healing process, repeated uncovering of scars, and excessive external stimulation can increase the size of scars.  Scars not only affect the aesthetics and mood, but perhaps also affect a person’s future, or affect a person’s marriage and happiness. There are many scar treatment or surgery methods, but few of them can achieve “aesthetic, cosmetic and beautiful” improvement.  What kind of scar removal method is considered scientific? What is “cosmetic scar repair”?  In recent years, plastic surgery or reconstructive surgery has made great progress in solving serious scar deformity or scar dysfunction, and the number of people coming to the hospital for scar removal increases significantly every holiday season. Different scars can be treated in many different ways in plastic surgery, and sometimes a single scar may not be resolved in just one way.  There are several types of scars: Good scars: are linear and flat scars that run parallel to the skin wrinkles and are the same color as normal skin tone.  Normal scars: Scars that are slightly elevated and a little darker than normal skin color.  Hyperplastic scars: Scars that are elevated, darker in color, and itchy and painful, but the elevation does not exceed the extent of the wound and will flatten out after a period of time.  Crab foot swelling: Because the scar is shaped like a crab’s limb and has a coffee color, the scar will invade the surrounding normal skin, which is the fibroblast inside divides continuously and will expand like a tumor. The scars often occur on the shoulders and forehead.  Tattooed scars: The cause is the wound infiltrated with foreign materials such as sand and gravel when the injury is not cleaned, this kind of wound treatment is different from general scars, superficial ones can be removed with laser, while deep ones need combined excision surgery.  In aesthetic plastic surgery, the main methods of scar removal are surgical method and chemical peeling method.  Chemical peeling method, that is, the use of the chemical agent carbolic acid, applied to the surface of the scar skin, after the scar skin off, can appear bright pink skin, to achieve the purpose of scar removal. However, this method can change the skin pigmentation, and most yellow people are not suitable for this method.  Scar correction works best when the scar is long and thin. The procedure is performed by first removing the scarred skin and then suturing it so that the normal skin next to it is gathered and joined. The skin thus sutured is not completely invisible, but it is less unsightly than before. About 6 months after surgery, the red surgical marks slowly change to skin color and become blurred, and after a few more months they are almost invisible.  When the scar is too wide, the treatment should be performed by skin grafting. This is a method of removing all the scarred skin and then grafting it onto the original scarred area by thinly cutting the skin from an inconspicuous area such as the abdomen or thighs. However, since the nature of the skin varies somewhat from one area to another, special treatment that applies a certain amount of pressure to the grafted area for a period of time is required in order not to have a depression or protrusion.  Cosmetic scar restoration technology emphasizes the integration, innovation and flexibility of effective medical aesthetic techniques. This technology is not “integrated”, but the medical institution must have adequate equipment and hardware, and the cosmetic surgeon must have profound theoretical level and skilled technical ability.  In the past, the medical profession believed that treatment of scars (trauma) should be started after six months to a year of stabilization. Now, it is proposed that “the best time to repair scars (trauma) should start from the time of injury”. Different periods of scarring should be treated differently, and each period is important in order to achieve the desired results.  The reasonable combination and flexible application of equipment and technology, surgery and techniques, drugs and deployment, repair and care is never an easy task, it needs time and experience to accumulate. This is the only way to achieve the absence of cosmetic barriers, which are as undetectable as non-invasive skin.       Plastic surgery has a variety of different tools to beautify scars because each scar is a different form and therefore the management of each scar is a challenge for the professional plastic surgeon and requires the cooperation of patient and physician in the fight against scarring.