What Lasers Work Best to Get Rid of Red Scars from Blepharoplasty and How Soon After Surgery Can I Start? Thank You

After blepharoplasty surgery, it is normal to have some redness of the scars during the healing process.  With time, this redness normally resolves completely.  Reducing exposure to the sun can help the redness fade away faster.  I'm not sure how long ago you had your surgery, or if your scars would be treatable with a laser.  More information and an exam would be needed to assess your condition.

Plastic surgery scars require attention after surgery so that they remain cosmetically-appealing and barely noticeable. In our office, we use a protocol for scars that minimizes their activity in the 6-8 weeks after surgery. If you have late plastic surgery scars, you may also require laser and RF therapy to help reduce the longterm effects of the scarring. Keloids, hypertrophic scars, widened scars, red scars, and hyperpigmented scars all require scar modulation with topical creams followed by lasers and RF therapy. Topical skincare should be directed to a specific need, whether for pigmentation or hypertrophy and our office can guide you through the process to obtain the correct Plato’s Scar cream or Melarase cream for hypertrophy and discoloration. In terms of lasers, we would employ the vbeam laser for redness, Venus Viva RF, PRP microneedling, chemical peels, and Morpheus 8, fractional erbium, or fractional co2. All of these have their individual benefits. Most of all, we recommend you visit a solid plastic surgeon who understands surgical scar revision, laser therapy, and RF therapy for scars.

Best,
Dr. Karamanoukian
Realself100 Surgeon

Most surgical scars improve in appearance with time and I threfore encourage patients to wait as long as possible before pursuing .  However, if patients are motivated to reduce redness more quickly rather than waiting for many months, I will sometimes treat scars once the wounds have healted sufficiently that the laser will not weaken them.  This is typically 3-4 weeks after eyelid surgery.  I generally do not treat lower eyelid scars with vascular lasers as this could affect eyelash growth.  Appropriate ocular protection must be used to prevent injury to the eyes.  The treatment is fast and there typically is no associated recovery time.  A few treatments are usually required to achieve best outcomes.

Hi Dalila.  Generally we would not perform any laser treatments on surgical scars for 6 months after the surgery.  This is how much time we deem that you need to heal without intervening with more treatments.  The body generally does a good job on it's own with this type of time.  

If the scars are red, we would be using a pulsed dye laser (Cynosure V-Star) to treat them.  

It is very unusual to require laser treatment of blepharoplasty incision scars.  These incisions take up to a year to fully heal.  Usually time is the best solution.  Sun avoidance is important.  Sometimes injections of steroids or 5 fluorouracil can be done for prominent or bumpy incisions.  I have never had to laser a blepharoplasty incision, but if I did for some reason a pulsed dye laser such as a V Beam would probably be best.  

Scarring should go on to heal nicely. I do not see a reason to laser the eyelids. You should avoid sun exposure and, if the surgery was recent, give things a chance to heal.

In general, blepharoplasty scars heal extremely fast.  Stay out of the sun until the scars are healed.  I see no reason why you should have laser on your scars.