Removal of Scars and Tattoos

In today’s world, there are hardly few people who do not have a scar or a tattoo on their body. Basically, scars are marks which are left after any injury.

How can we prevent scars?

The most important thing is to take immediate treatment after having an injury to prevent scars, it is imperative or it is important even if it is a small scar or small injury. Even if we let it heal on its own, it usually will leave a bad mark. So it is always advisable to take some treatment, in case you have a cut, preferably with a plastic surgeon or any other trained person who can stitch these wounds in a manner which will leave a minimal scar.

The next question which comes to our mind is that, Is it possible to completely remove the scar or make the scars invisible?

Well, honestly, it is not possible. Every individual has his own way of healing, and in some patients, we have seen such good healing that the scars become hardly noticeable. Still by better techniques, by use of creams, lasers and other techniques, the scars can actually be made almost invisible.

Now I would like to discuss is Tattoos,

We, as plastic surgeons are concerned about making tattoos. But a lot of people approach us, to get their tattoo removed. There may be many reasons like social reasons like somebody gets selected in the Army or the police force where the tattoos are not allowed. So these patients come to us, and they ask what can be done for these tattoos. Basically, there are two modalities for managing a tattoo:

• One is a non-surgical or laser or by chemical peeling
• Surgical.

Laser treatment is more effective in removing scars rather than tattoos. It requires a number of sittings, usually 6 to 8 sittings or even more, as per the requirement. It makes the tattoo little hazy and little lighter after a certain period of time. There are however certain tattoos, which can be removed to a great extent but not completely.

Then the other technique is by surgical excision or surgical removal. Now this technique is useful for people, like, somebody comes to me and says, Sir I have my medical interview for Army after 20 days and I have a tattoo which is not allowed and I cannot go for laser, so the option that is available is surgical removal. If the scars are thin, like these names and all, they can be easily removed with leaving just a line, which with time becomes lighter. But if there are big scars, or big tattoos, which are broader, then many times we have to remove them and we need to put a graft also, a skin graft. So these are the two techniques, by suturing or by skin graft, wherein we can remove the scars and tattoos.

To know more about this, you can get in touch with me on Lybrate. Thank You.