Researchers know that the body produces more collagen than its needs to heal the injured skin. That's why the keloid scar grows bigger than the wound that caused it.
After the wound heals, apply silicone gel sheets or silicone gel. You can buy both of these products without a prescription. They can help prevent a keloid. To get the best results, you apply a new sheet or gel to the area every day.
A keloid scar usually grows for months or years and becomes bigger than the original wound. While it's growing, it may feel itchy or painful. This usually stops once it's finished growing. If it's on or near a joint, the joint can be uncomfortable or difficult to move.
Once it begins, a keloid tends to grow slowly for months or years. This slow growth differs greatly from the other type of raised scar called a hypertrophic scar. If you have a hypertrophic scar, it appears one to two months after you wound your skin and the scar tissue doesn't grow beyond the wound.
Keloid growth might be triggered by any sort of skin injury — an insect bite, acne, an injection, body piercing, burns, hair removal, and even minor scratches and bumps. Sometimes keloids form for no obvious reason. Keloids aren't contagious or cancerous. A keloid is different from a hypertrophic scar.
Keloid is a skin disease characterized by exaggerated scar formation, excessive fibroblast proliferation, and excessive collagen deposition. Cancers commonly arise from a fibrotic microenvironment; e.g., hepatoma arises from liver cirrhosis, and oral cancers arise from submucosal fibrosis.
Keloids are a result of aberrant wound healing. Standard wound healing consists of three phases: (1) inflammatory, (2) fibroblastic, and (3) maturation.
Keloids can continue to grow for months or even years. They eventually stop growing but they do not disappear without treatment. In some cases, as mentioned above, keloids can return after they have been removed.
When a keloid first appears, it's often red, pink, or slightly darker than your natural skin tone. As it grows, it may darken. Some become lighter in the center and darker at the edges.
Conclusion: Keloids never completely disappear to leave skin with normal texture, however they can resolve (flatten and soften) so they no longer burden patients in approximately one third of cases. Scars resolving spontaneously do so early in the disease. Those that don't may resolve after many years of treatment.
Scar Massage
Research has shown that gently massaging a scar may break down scar tissue as it forms. It may also prevent hypertrophic scars or keloids from developing after an injury.
However, it's important to not scratch the scar while it's healing. When scar tissue is forming, scratching will only cause abrasion on the skin, forcing even more scar tissue to form to repair itself. This causes keloid scars to grow due to the excess growth of scar tissue.
Once you have them, keloids are notoriously difficult to eliminate and have a very high chance of re-growing once they are surgically cut out. This is because the body is likely to respond in the same exaggerated way to this surgery as it did to the initial injury.
If a keloid develops around your ear piercing after the piercing has healed, contact a healthcare provider. They may recommend that you take your earring out right away and wear a pressure earring. Or they may recommend that you keep your earring in until they're able to conduct a physical examination of your ear.
The cost of keloid removal ranges from $75 to upward of $2,000 depending on the type and duration of treatment. Keloid removal is considered a cosmetic procedure, therefore is not usually covered by health insurance. As a rule of thumb, larger, more severe keloids will cost more to remove.
In some instances, a surgeon may recommend removing a large hypertrophic scar or keloid. Keloids that far exceed the margins of the original wound, for example, require removal to allow surgeons to reconstruct the surrounding skin and tissue and restore as much of the underlying structure as possible.
Keloids rarely disappear on their own. They may flatten and soften over time, but they don't usually go away completely. For some people, these natural changes are enough to make keloids look better, but, even so, the skin never looks the same as before.
Aspirin. Aspirin works to help reduce the appearance of keloid scars by preventing the cells that form the scars from entering the wound site in the first place. To do this, you can crush approximately three aspirin and mix them with enough water to create a paste.
Keloids can become infected as they grow, with bleeding, pain and swelling. These infections can show up as systemic/ bloodstreams infections as well. Signs of an infected keloid include tenderness, pain and more warmer skin than the surrounding area.
Keloids often do not need treatment. If the keloid bothers you, discuss your concern with a skin doctor (dermatologist). The doctor may recommend these treatments to reduce the size of the keloid: Corticosteroid injections.
Keloids can be treated, so it is not a condition you have to continue living with. The treatment involves superficial radiation and is incredibly effective in removing keloid scars.
Dermatofibrosarcoma Protuberans is an extremely rare condition that can be confused with keloid, especially if growing to the size of 50 mm or not healing anyway (1, 4, 5, 7). In such cases, a detailed investigation covers core biopsy and CT-imaging to achieve an exact tissue evaluation.