Acne Scars and The Treatments Available

As if suffering acne for years isn’t enough, many people also have to suffer from acne scars after their acne has gone.

Fortunately, there are many effective acne scar removal treatments available to you if you suffer from acne scarring.

Many of the most effective acne scar removal treatments come from your dermatologist.

So it’s important to see medical professionals before you try over the counter products, because a dermatologist has many more options for treating your acne scars.

Before you can have acne scar removal treatment, your skin needs to be clear of acne.

Once your skin is clear of acne, your dermatologist will be able to accurately determine the type of acne scars you have.

 There’s three main types of acne scar. The first type is known as the “ice pick”. These scars get their name from how it looks like the skin has been punctured by an ice pick. They are narrow, at around 2mm max.

They are too deep, however, for most resurfacing treatments (which I’ll talk about soon).

The next type of acne scar is the “boxcar”. These are round (or sometimes oval) indentations on the skin. Sometimes they can be shallow, in which case a simple chemical peel or laser treatment will work well. But in other cases, they can be too deep for this treatment.

The final type of acne scar is the “rolling” scar. This is when the scarred skin becomes connected to the tissue below the surface of the skin, and gives it a “rolling” appearance. This can be quite tricky to remove, but it is certainly achievable.

Now let’s talk about some of the treatments that are available for these acne scars. The first type is dermabrasion. This is a treatment for removing surface scars. It can be very expensive, and sometimes you’ll need more than one treatment, but it can be very effective.

Another even more expensive option is laser resurfacing. This can give incredible results, but it is usually twice the cost of the previous treatment.

A less expensive option for surface scars, is chemical peels. These peels literally take off the top layers of you skin, and expose the unscarred skin layers below. It can sometimes be a bit painful after the treatment, but it does get results.

A popular method for removing deeper scars is the “punch” method. This usually works quite well with ice pick scars. It can be quite expensive, but it’s certainly affordable if you only have a few scars treated. Punch treatment usually costs “per punch”.

If you’re seriously considering having any of these treatments done, be sure to spend time talking about what kind of results you’ll get with your doctor. Make sure you are shown before and after pictures of previous patients, too. To make sure you know what to expect.