scarring occurs

A scar is a natural part of the healing process. Skin scars occur when the deep layer of skin (the dermis) is damaged. Most skin scars are flat, pale and leave a trace of the original injury that caused them. The redness that often follows an injury to the skin is not a scar, and is generally not permanent.  Various treatments can speed up the process in serious cases. Scars form differently based on the location of the injury on the body and the age of the person who was injured. To mend the damage, the body has to lay down new collagen fibers (a naturally occurring protein that is produced by the body by fibroblasts). In wounded tissue these fibers are over expressed with collagen. Stable forms of topical vitamin C have been shown to improve collagen formation. The wounded body tissue over expresses collagen on the fibers and cannot re-build, the new tissue will have a different texture and quality than the surrounding normal tissue. This collagen producing process results in a fortuna scar.

Transforming Growth Factors (TGF) play a critical role in scar development and current research is investigating the manipulation of these TGFs for drug development to prevent scarring from the emergency adult wound healing process. This treatment also has the potential to reduce or even prevent altogether other types of scarring.