Can Radiesse Reveal Old Acne Scars?

Radiesse is injected deeply into the skin and won't reveal old acne scars.  You make start looking closer at your skin since you got the radiesse and start to see old scars that were always there before.

Hello.  What you are pointing out is certainly possible.  Especially in convex areas of the face (those outward rolling areas) like the cheekbones, adding more volume in the dermis can make the cheeks appear fuller and more rounded, but it can also cause the skin to be stretched slightly from the additional volume. 

This stretching may make older acne scars more apparent.  This would be similar to finding small imperfections on a balloon as it is blown up.  As the surface area increases, the imperfections become more visible.

Radiesse is not injected superficially as it is viscous (thick) and meant to be injected between the dermis and subcutaneous fatty layer. I doubt that the filler would be placed so high in the dermis that it would fill up the skin around the ice pick scar making the depressed scar look deeper.  What I have seen in practice is that Radiesse which is used during my panfacial augmentation procedures to revolumize the face when significant atrophy of the fatty layer has taken place, is that the deep folds which have skin that is not seen for years that traverses down along the walls of the fold, are now raised and are visible.  With this skin that formerly hid in the shadow of the deep crease walls now raised, the surface epidermis imperfections are seen again for the first time in years. This is the same as using your hands to pull the skin back and make a tighter face, the way people do when they want to see how they would look after a facelift, and then see the skin for the first time in years that was hiding.

Ice pick scars can be treated with different techniques such as the CROSS technique with TCA (trichloracetic acid) or punch grafts and then resurfacing. There are risks and these need to be discussed in detail with prospective patients.