Monday, July 27, 2009

Are Acne Scars Permanent?

By Gail Jones

Acne scars are an awful memento of the having suffered pimples or even acne previously. They are intolerable because of their seeming permanence and their non-complimentary appearance. Generally speaking, acne scars are rather hard to eradicate, but tissue regeneration is not impossible these days with all the amazing technological advancements.

In general terms, when referring to acne scars, we mean the healed lesions resulting from an acne infection. While most scarring is temporary and will probably disappear naturally in time, scarring from the more severe forms of acne can become permanent.

Acne scars can be prevented if the patient sees a doctor when it is in the incipient stage, especially if nodules or cysts accompany the red pustules on the skin's surface. If the bouts of acne have marked your skin, you will have to approach the issue from a different perspective, which most of the time involves surgery.

Laser resurfacing is one possibility of removing the damaged skin parts and stimulating the natural regrowth of the tissue beneath. This operation only requires local anaesthesia and can take between a few minutes and an hour depending on the extent of the damage.

Fractional laser therapy is one of the most recent methods of removing acne scarring. It involves surgical intervention at deep skin layers. The therapy is better than both dermabrasion and laser resurfacing in terms of quality and involves a very reduced healing period. Nevertheless, fractional laser therapy is within the reach of only those few lucky people, who can afford it, since it is the most expensive acne treatment available these days.

Sometimes, additional sessions are required to improve the condition of the superficial layers of skin, before they can tackle the deep level treatment of the acne scar. The doctor may inject collagen into the scarring in order to raise the normal skin level or she/he may recommend micro-dermabrasion for the very same purpose. Trying to perform chemical peels for acne treatment at home is a bad policy given the risk of aggravating the condition by irritating the scars even more.

As for the forms of acne scars, they can be classified according to the formation pattern. Scars can result because of an increase of tissue or due to a loss of tissue They both have an adverse impact on the way the face looks. Specialists' evaluation of the nature of the scars is an extremely important factor in deciding on the selection of one kind of therapy or the other.

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