Other Skin Procedures

1. Bleeding (haematoma). Occasionally, after surgery, blood may pool under the skin (haematoma), this usually disperses spontaneously over 2 to 3 weeks, but very rarely needs to be drained surgically if larger and fails to disperse.
2. It is important to recognise that a surgical incision contributes to the risk of the introduction of bacteria from the patient’s own skin. Such infection may be associated with tiredness, weakness, fever and muscle aches and pains. Antibiotics are not normally given during this procedure as there is no evidence that giving antibiotics reduces the chance of an infection occurring. If you experience any symptoms of infection, contact your clinic nurse or the advised out of hours contact number.
3. Wound healing. Healing of wounds varies from patient to patient and even from one part of the body to another and is a gradual process. Smoking for the period leading up to your surgery and afterwards can seriously hinder the healing process.
4. Small cysts called milia can form along the scar line. This is normally temporary, but sometimes may need surgical removal
5. Scar variability and keloids. All prospective patients must be aware that the rate at which their scars may heal and fade are entirely variable and individual. Uncommonly, a scar does not heal in the normal way. This is known as hypertrophic scarring meaning the scar is excessively thick. Scars may be red, or highly coloured, thick, painful and may take several years to improve if at all. Although this is an unusual problem, it cannot be avoided or diagnosed in advance. Notching can sometimes occur in the lower border of the earlobe but this is reduced by the use of the Z- pasty technique.

Steroids do have side effects such as thinning the skin, making the blood vessels in the skin stand out more and also thinning the fat within the skin.

The main risk for any surgery to a keloid is recurrence of the keloid. Partial removal reduces the risk of the keloid re-growing back to the size it was before, however, total surgical removal of a keloid is known to cause much more aggressive re-growth of the keloid and is not usually recommended. Bleeding, infection and wounds re-opening are less commonly found.

It’s important to understand that scars cannot be magically airbrushed away and that a scar revision involves trading the original scar for hopefully a better quality scar.

Most patients heal within a few weeks and sutures are normally removed between a week or two depending on where the original scar was located.