Scars & Stretch Marks

A scar is what skin does when an injury reaches below the top layer. The repair is fast rather than tidy. When skin is injured below the surface, fibroblasts deposit collagen into the injured layers to support and mend the tissue, and the build up of that collagen is what gives a scar its appearance. Scar tissue sits at a slightly different height than the skin around it, and it is often a different color as well.

Stretch marks are the same event seen from the inside. When skin is stretched faster than the dermis can keep up with, in pregnancy, a growth spurt, a rapid gain or a rapid loss, the collagen and elastin framework tears, and the tear heals with exactly that disorganized collagen. A stretch mark is a scar, which is why it is treated like one and why the same devices appear on both lists.

Two things about any scar decide what will help. The first is height: whether it sits below the surrounding skin, sits raised above it, or is level and simply the wrong texture and color. The second is age, and this matters more here than in almost anything else we treat. A new scar or a new stretch mark is red or purple. A mature one has gone white or silver. Fraxel has shown particular promise on newer, red-colored stretch marks, though it is also one of the better options for older, white ones. Once they are white, texture can still be improved, and the color difference is the part that resists. Neither a scar nor a stretch mark fully disappears. What improves is the texture and the color mismatch, and a good result is a mark you have to look for.

If your stretch marks are still red or purple, treat them now. That color means the tissue is still remodelling, and a course of Fraxel or Microneedling is worth starting in that window. Once the marks are white and settled, the texture still improves and the ridging still softens, but the color difference is the part that resists, because there is no pigment left in that strip of skin to bring back. We would rather tell you that at the consultation than after four sessions. It is also worth waiting until weight or a pregnancy has stabilised, since fresh stretching over treated skin undoes the work.

Scars have their own clock. A surgical or injury scar keeps remodelling for many months after it closes, and what you do during that period matters more than most people realize. Keep it out of the sun, because sun exposure on a healing scar is what drives the discoloration that is hardest to undo later. We will guide you through scar care and offer treatments such as laser therapy or microneedling to reduce scar visibility, timed to where your scar is in its healing.

Skin tone changes the recommendation too. In deeper tones, ablative and light-based resurfacing carries a genuine risk of post-inflammatory pigmentation, which trades a scar for a patch of discolouration, and that is not a trade worth making. Morpheus8 and Microneedling are usually the safer route there, run conservatively. Raised, thick, rubbery scars are the other case to sort out before anything is booked: a hypertrophic scar or a keloid is an overgrowth rather than a deficit, aggressive resurfacing can aggravate it, and it needs a physician to look at it and often a different first step altogether.

Most plans here combine two things rather than choosing one, because many patients have a combination of scar types. A widespread field of stretch marks is usually Fraxel over a series. A single surgical scar is often ProFractional Laser, which resurfaces at a deeper level. Extensive, long-standing scarring in someone who can genuinely take one to two weeks of downtime gets the most correction per session from CO2 Laser Resurfacing. A depressed scar on the face is often Radiesse first to lift the floor, then resurfacing to blend the surface. What a consultation settles is the height of the scar, its age, your skin tone, and how much recovery you can honestly take, and those four answers usually pick the treatment before we have to.