Scar Improvement

About your surgery

When dealing with prominent scars, your surgeon will apply treatment in order to:

• Make the scar thinner.
• Diminish the rough edges, irregularities, prominences and deficiencies in the skin that occur because of the wound and its healing.
• Redirect the scars in order to help minimize its prominence.

Surgical scar revision includes multilayer closure techniques that diminish the pressure on the wound site while it heals. Scars can be broken up into geometric configurations or "z-plasty" which help further to minimize the visibility of the scar.

If your surgeon decides to perform the Z-plasty surgical technique, he will try to reposition a scar to conform more closely to the natural lines and creases of the skin, where it will be less noticeable.

During this procedure, your surgeon will remove the old scar and will perform new incisions on each side, creating small triangular flaps of skin. He will then rearrange them to cover the wound at a different angle, giving the scar a "Z"pattern. The wound is closed with fine stitches, which are removed a few days later. This procedure is performed under local anesthetic and does not necessitate hospitalization.

It is important to remember that Z-plasty won't make scars disappear. A portion of the scar will still remain outside the lines of relaxation.

Typically, your surgeon will perform laser resurfacing three to eight weeks after the initial injury, surgery, or revision surgical treatment. This will achieve some additional improvement in the ultimate appearance of the wound long term.

For more serious scars, your surgeon may recommend skin grafts and flaps. The treated area may take several weeks or months to heal, and a support garment or bandage may be necessary for up to a year.

Grafting involves the transfer of skin from a healthy part of the body (the donor site) to cover the injured area. There is a certain risk of a graft not "taking", even though they are from your own skin. In addition, all grafts leave some scarring at the donor and recipient sites.

Flap surgery is a more complex procedure in which skin, along with the underlying fat, blood vessels, and sometimes the muscle, is moved from a healthy part of the body to the injured site.

Skin grafting and flap surgery can greatly improve the function of a scarred area, even though the cosmetic results may be less satisfactory. In general, flap surgery produces better cosmetic results than skin grafts.