Keloid Scars – Top Health Today

Keloid is an overgrown scar tissue around an injury. It takes nearly 3 months or even a year to form. There are many causes for keloid formation like acne, body piercing, surgical wounds, and boils. They are common among the age group of 10 – 30years.

The formation can be diagnosed by clinical inspection and no investigation is required. Keloids are regarded as harmless and do not become cancerous. In course of time, these formations might reduce in size but never really disappears until removed or treated.

Pressure dressing/occlusive (airtight) dressing

This procedure started in 1981 and gained its popularity in 1990’s. It is one of the popular methods generally adopted to treat Keloids. It is a non-invasive procedure which involves applying pressure and restricting air from contacting with the wound.

This procedure is considered to be safe as it has minimal or no side effects, painless and cost effective.

First a silicon in the form of gel/impregnated adhesive sheet or polyurethane patch is used to dress the wound.
This dressing is kept for 12 – 24 hours a day and is repeated for 6 to 12 months.
For earlobe Keloids, clip – on earring is the only practical solution.

The pressure applied during the dressing, helps to decrease the metabolism of tissues. It also aims at compressing and softening the scar and resulting in loser collagen or scar tissue grouping.

This form of dressing is highly recommended as the first-line of treatment for keloid or hypertrophic scars, especially for burns or after skin grafting. It is more of mechanical dressing and is helpful because it can be customized based on:

The patients age
Section of affected area like limb and torso; face and neck; hands and feet;
Size of the wound.
Type and density of the keloid.

The effectiveness of keloid treatment through pressure dressing has been regarded clinically successful. Few practitioners have reported.

60% - 80% of patients who followed the regime diligently have had partial improvement.
86% of the patients have shown improvement in texture reduction.
84% have shown improvement in skin color.
68% have said there has been a remarkable reduction in the height/bulge of the scar.

Though there are reports suggesting significant improvement in treating keloid with the pressure dressing procedure. Few practitioners feel no one method can help in completely getting rid of keloids.

For example some believed surgical excision combined with ‘pressure dressing‘ as an additional treatment can help in getting rid of the scar more efficiently.

The treatments time frame has led to a few factors that interrupt the treatment and thus have had very little success ratio to exhibit the results.

Duration of the treatment resulting in poor adherence of the regime.
Difficulty in scheduling appointments for re-dressing after every12 or 24 hours.
The prolonged dressing cause discomfort to patience due to excess sweating.
The adhesive on the dressing patch may cause irritation or skin rashes

It is the very usual phenomena: when our skin gets injured, something surrounds it for the time until it gets healed to the full right? Well, those are some tissues which are mostly fibrous ones and are often referred to as scar tissues and they keep on surrounding the area of injury or wound until it gets healed to the full. So far, everything is good and perfectly normal but the problem arises when these scar tissues grow excessively and form some hard and smooth growth. These growths are basically referred to as Keloids scar.

One of the worst problems with Keloids is that they can be of much larger size than the original wound itself and as a result can be seen and identified easily from some distance. Some of the most favorite places of Keloids are the face, cheeks, shoulder, chest and earlobes. However, this does not mean that Keloid cannot form anywhere else because literally, it has the license of forming itself in almost any part of the body. A person needs to keep in mind that Keloid is not in any way hazardous to your health but however, it can prove to be a cosmetic problem if it is in any part of the body which is mostly exposed to the eyes of others.

The story of forming Keloid is not of a day or a week. It in most cases take up many weeks and even months to form properly. Keloid, as said before, might not be harmful to your health, but certainly can prove to be a lot itchy. It is possible that you may face certain discomfort from them because of the clothes that you choose to wear over them. It can happen because of the friction that they may produce when they collide with each other. There is another thing which is quite rare but is possible for those who have been undergoing through this phenomena and that is the expansion of Keloid to multiple parts of the body. If in case this happens, then the sufferer will find a really hard time in moving his limbs because excessive keloids restrict the movements making you dependent on others!

We are sure that if the Keloid on your body is in a part which is exposed then you will definitely want to get it removed. Adding to that, the tanning from the sun may also help in discoloring of the Keloid further adding exposing it to the general public. The only way you can avoid this from happening is keeping your Keloid under the cover all the times so that it does not only stays hidden from the eyes but from the sun as well.

In general cases, most of the people suffering from Keloid do not go to a doctor since there is not much he is able to do. However, it is highly recommended to you to visit a doctor if you have been experiencing growth in your keloid scars from quite some time because it can be a symptom of skin cancer. So, if this is the case with you, we recommend that you go to your doctor right away!

Do Pressure Dressings Help Keloids

Pressure dressing/occlusive (airtight) dressing

What is A Keloid Scar?