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So, a depressed atrophic scar, often, you see it with acne, so patients that have had acne as teenagers, they develop these depressed scars. And actually, what happens over time as people age, those scars become even more prominent. So, we see people as they get older, we actually see a lot more of those. That's the most common source of a depressed scar. A raised scar will tend to be from some sort of injury, whether it's a surgical injury so something having been cut out, having had surgery like having appendix taken out and they may have a thick scar there, or heart surgery, they've got a thick scar. Then the super thick scars, keloidal scars, they tend to happen because someone has that propensity to develop them. So they can happen from injury or they can actually happen spontaneously and they just pop up. One type of scar we see quite often is scars on earlobes. Earlobe scars because when people have pierced ears, women mostly, but now we see men as well, they have pierced ears, and they may sometimes develop keloids.

Often, it's because when they had the piercing, they may have had an infection or something happened, but sometimes spontaneously. But the great thing is those are scars, we can really make a difference. We can usually surgically remove it. So one other way to fix scars is to surgically make changes in the scar. So this kind of scar, we would remove surgically, fix it, stitch it up, and then put some medicine in there to keep the scar from coming back.

What Causes Scars?

Doctor George J. Hruza shares insights to what causes scars.