What is a Scar?

A scar is the tissue formed following an injury. Scarring is the action through which an injured tissue repairs itself so it can regain form and function. Skin scars occur when the deep, thick layer of skin, the dermis, is damaged. The worse the damage is, the worse the scar will be. To mend the damage, the body has to lay down new collagen fibers (a naturally occurring protein which is produced by the body). This process results in a scar because the body cannot re-build the tissue exactly as it was, the new scar tissue will have a different texture and quality than the surrounding normal tissue. An injury does not become a scar until the wound has completely healed.

Transforming Growth Factors (TGF) play a critical role in scar development and current research is investigating the manipulation of these growth factors.

Most skin scars are flat, pale and leave a trace of the original injury that caused them. The time for a scar to go away may, however, take from a few days to, in some serious and rare cases, several years. Various treatments can speed up the process and help prevent abnormal scars.

Scars form differently based on the location of the injury on the body and the age of the person who was injured, the color of the skin. Patients at higher risk of developing scars include those age 40 years or less, those with highly pigmented skin (e.g., African-Americans or Asians), or individuals with a previous history of hypertrophic scars.¹ To mend the damage, the body has to lay down new collagen fibres (a naturally occurring protein which is produced by the body).

This process results in a fortuna scar. Because the body cannot re-build the tissue exactly as it was, the new scar tissue will have a different texture and quality than the surrounding normal tissue. An injury does not become a scar until the wound has completely healed.