Prevention and treatment of excessive dermal scarring

Today, wound management to avoid excessive scar formation is increasingly important, especially in populations with Fitzpatrick 3 or higher skin pigmentation. Medical science and industrial development are devoting more effort toward understanding and offering better therapy to control scars. However, advances in scar management have been hampered by the confusing or ambiguous terminology. There is no consensus on what amount of post-traumatic skin scar formation is "normal" and what should be considered "hypertrophic". In the World Health Organization's ICD-9, there is no diagnostic code for hypertrophic scar--only keloid is listed. Yet, the medical and scientific literature distinguishes them as different conditions. Our experience suggests that the diagnosis of keloid disease is greatly over-rendered. For black patients, an elevated scar seems, by default, diagnosed as keloid by most. This confusion results in inappropriate management of scar formation, and occasionally contributes to decision making related to elective or cosmetic surgery. Given that patients are expecting better outcomes from wound care today than in the past, this review article attempts to capture the essential biological factors related to wound scar production and discusses treatment options and indications used by the authors.