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  • The Different Types of Scars and what Causes Them
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Dr. George J. Hruza: So a depressed or atrophic scar, often, you see it with acne. So, patients that have had acne as teenagers, they've developed 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 more of those. So that's the most common source of a depressed scar. A raised scar will tend to be from some kind of injury, whether it's a surgical injury, so, something having been cut or having surgery, like, having an appendix taken out, and they may have a thick scar there or heart surgery, get a thick scar.

And then, the super thick scars, keloid scars, they tend to happen, because someone has a propensity to develop. So they can happen from trauma, from injury or they can actually happen spontaneously, and they just pop up. One source of one type of scar we see quite often, is scars in earlobes. So earlobe scars, because when people have pierced ears, and it's 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 an infection or something happened, but sometimes, spontaneously. But the great thing is, those are scars that we can really make a difference.

We can usually surgically remove it. So one of the ways to fix scars is to actually 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.

The Different Types of Scars and what Causes Them

Doctor George Hruza discusses what causes the different types of scars, such as keloid, hypertrophic, acne.