Dr Vikas Sharma
Skin wounds are something that we’ve all had to deal with at some point in life. We have all experienced wounds that vary from tiny nicks to large cuts and gashes that need to be stitched.
One of the most dreaded wounds can be a facial scar, whether small or big. Although scars are a natural part of the skin’s healing process, these can cause pain, inconvenience and make affected person self-consciousness.
Many problems like acne, surgical procedures, sports injuries and viral infections such as chicken pox, herpes, etc. can lead to permanent facial scarring.
When you injure your skin, your body naturally repairs the damage. How the body repairs this damage depends on how deeply the injury has penetrated your skin. To repair damage that goes deeper than the first layer, the body makes a tissue that’s thicker than normal skin. When injury/cut affects the deeper layers of the skin, cells make collagen to repair the wound. Because the body makes this collagen rather quickly, it’s thicker and less flexible than the rest of the skin. This thicker, less flexible tissue is a scar.
Scars come in many shapes and sizes and can happen due to many factors.
Cause (accident, acne, burn, surgery, etc.).
Wound (size and how deeply the wound has penetrated the skin).
Body part (where the wound is located on skin).
Care (When and how the wound has been treated).
Knowledge of wound care is, thus, necessary to minimise the chances of wound turning into a scar. Scars are fibrous tissues that replace normal skin after an injury or inflammation. A scar is also formed by collagen tissue, the tissue that provides structural support to skin. But in a scar, the alignment of collagen fibres is different than the normal tissue. This scar tissue alignment is usually of inferior functional quality. For example, scars on the facial skin are less resistant to ultraviolet radiation and sweat glands and hair follicles do not grow back within scar tissue.
In severe cases, facial scars can even limit a person’s mobility. The extent of scarring is based on the severity of the original skin lesions, the delay in treating the skin disorder and also on inter-play of hormones and genes.
Prevention and precautions
You can’t completely prevent scarring but some steps can minimise your chance of developing scars.
Erasing the scars
— The writer is a dermatologist, National Skin Hospital, Mansa Devi Complex, Panchkula.
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