Can wound care cream prevent scar hyperplasia

There is really no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. Ordinary moisturizing and antibacterial basic wound care creams have no direct effect in preventing scar hyperplasia. Only medical-grade care creams containing specific medicinal ingredients can have a certain auxiliary preventive effect when used after the wound is completely healed, and it cannot be 100% preventable.

I have been in the dermatology clinic for almost five years, and I have met more than a hundred patients who asked this question. Many people confuse ordinary wound care creams with anti-scar care creams, thinking that as long as they apply the cream, they will not develop scars, which has led to many pitfalls. A while ago, a young man fell off his knee while riding an electric bike. The wound was so deep that it even touched the dermal layer. He bought a basic care ointment worth tens of yuan in a drug store and applied it on it, saying it could prevent scarring. However, after the scab fell off, a bright red hyperplasia scar appeared on the wound. It was still itchy when he scratched it. He came over and asked me why it didn't work. When I saw that what he bought was ordinary Vaseline with antibacterial agents, it could at most keep the wound moist and prevent infection. It was equivalent to setting up a clean "little tent" for the injured skin to help it grow. It couldn't control the overactive fibroblasts during skin repair. To put it bluntly, scar hyperplasia means that the "construction team" of skin repair worked too hard and piled up too much excess fibrous tissue. The basic care ointment was in charge of construction site sanitation. It couldn't persuade the construction team to work less, and of course it couldn't prevent the growth.

Speaking of this, some people will inevitably ask, so I had a very shallow cut before, but I applied ordinary care cream and there was no scar? This is most likely because your wound only hurt the epidermis and will not leave any hypertrophic scars. The nursing cream will only help you heal faster and reduce pigmentation. If it really hurts the deeper layers of the dermis, it won’t matter how much ordinary products you apply.

Currently, nursing creams that are clinically recognized as assisting in inhibiting proliferation basically contain ingredients such as silicone, onion extract or low-concentration glucocorticoids, which is equivalent to putting a tight spell on the "construction team" to prevent them from over-producing. Two little girls who had their double eyelids done at about the same time came for follow-up consultation. One of them did not have scars. After the stitches were removed and the wound was completely healed, she insisted on applying silicone cream twice a day. After applying it for more than three months, the incision was almost flat, with only a faint mark that was almost invisible. The other was born with scars. Even after applying imported silicone cream for half a year strictly as required, the corners of her eyes were still slightly raised. Later, she received two scar softening injections to smooth them down. This is also a controversial point in the industry: most clinical data show that this type of functional care cream can reduce the probability of hyperplasia by 30 to 40% for newly healed wounds in the general population. However, for people with scarred constitutions, the effect of using it alone is very limited, and it must be combined with pressure patches and fractional lasers for combined intervention.

Many people also think that the more expensive the care cream, the better the effect. Previously, a beauty seeker spent hundreds of dollars to buy an imported scar cream from an Internet celebrity. He only applied it once a day when he remembered, and stopped after less than two weeks. In the end, he still had scars. He came over and said that the product was useless. In fact, the usage is wrong: this kind of functional care ointment can only be used when the wound is completely healed and there is no exudation or ulceration. It needs to be applied in a thin layer twice a day for 3 to 6 months. If it is applied incorrectly and the time is not enough, no matter how expensive the product is, it will be in vain. Some people rush to apply it just after removing the sutures and there is still tissue fluid in the wound. Instead, the wound will be suffocated and prone to infection, which will increase the risk of hyperplasia.

To put it bluntly, don’t treat wound care cream as a magical anti-proliferation medicine. First, find out what the ingredients of the product in your hand are and what stage of wound recovery it is. Only when you use it correctly can it be effective. If the wound is deep and scarred, don’t just rely on applying the ointment. See a doctor for evaluation as soon as possible. If necessary, cooperate with other interventions. This is better than anything else.