Beauty

What About the Scar?

By Dr. Valerie Ablaza

A scar is evidence that the body has healed a wound. The wound can be the result of an injury or can be from a surgical procedure. It’s no different than when a large branch is broken off a tree and a permanent ring or scar develops on the trunk of the tree. Once the skin has been wounded below the surface, a scar will inevitably result. Scars don’t form after simple abrasions, paper cuts or sunburn because the deeper skin layers have not been injured.

Plastic surgery is a specialized technique of modifying and repairing skin and soft tissues. After closing a deep cut from an injury, I have had more than one person ask, “When do I have the plastic surgery to get rid of the scar?”. These people may be disappointed to know the “plastic surgery” has already been done and there’s really no way to completely “remove” the resulting scar that forms. Of course, there is a big difference between a good scar and a bad scar, but there is no way to avoid scars altogether once an injury has occurred. A very good scar can be relatively invisible, but upon close inspection, there will always be some type of thin, fine line.

There are many factors that influence the appearance of a scar, some of which include the mechanism of injury, location of the wound, skin type and method of wound repair. Applying tapes, creams, lotions, Vitamin E, and silicone gel sheeting to a healing wound have less of an impact on the final appearance of the scar than the above factors. Some areas of the body, like the upper eyelid, heal with thin line scars. Other areas of the body typically heal with thicker or wider scars, such as the upper chest, back and knee joint.

In general, people with thin, fair skin heal with thinner scars while those with darker, thick skin have a greater chance of healing with a more visible scar. Also, cuts that follow the natural skin creases heal the best while lacerations that run perpendicular to natural skin lines lead to less favorable scars. That means, a vertical scar on the lower abdomen usually does not look as good as a horizontal scar along the lower abdomen, as one would have in a tummy tuck

Plastic surgeons have trained for many years to learn the proper techniques of handling tissue and performing optimal skin closures. After all, we are the only surgical specialists who are intentionally making incisions on healthy people when we perform cosmetic surgery. It behooves us to know how to make scars that look the best, since in many ways scars become an advertisement for our work. Plastic surgeons may not be magicians who can make scars disappear, but we know the tricks to make them look as invisible as possible.

Dr. Valerie Ablaza is a partner and the vice president of The Plastic Surgery Group. She is board certified by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, is a fellow of the American College of Surgeons, and is a member of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. She co-authored Beauty in Balance: A Common Sense Approach to Cosmetic Surgery and Treatments and was a guest author of Fifty Things to Do When You Turn Fifty.

Beauty

What About the Scar?

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