Seattle Plastic Surgeon answers Plastic Surgery FAQ: Will surgery leave a scar?
A face lift scar about 6 months after surgery.
If the surgery involves incising though the full thickness of skin, the surgery will leave a scar. You see, higher organisms such as you and me heal by scarring. If we were sea stars we would be able to regenerate the violated skin but alas, we are not sea stars so we scar.
Scarring depends some on how the incision is closed and depends a lot of the patient’s biology and the scar location. The face and neck usually heal really nicely whereas the shoulder and central chest often scar quite noticeably even with the most careful stitching. Young people scar more than older folks (weird, huh?) and people of color tend to scar more than people of pallor.
Plastic surgeons are good at closing incisions very, very carefully so all the layers of the incision line up just right. We are also really, really good at hiding scars in natural skin folds or anatomic borders. This photo shows a close up of this ladies ear. Do you see her facelift incision? Her scar is there but it is really, really narrow because I closed it carefully without tension and it is hidden in the contours of her ear.
So yes, surgery will leave a scar and yes, I will do my very best to close it as nicely as possible and to hide it if I can.
And after the stitches come out, I follow my patients carefully. I have almost all of my breast and body surgery patients wear tape over their incisions for about three months. The constant, light pressure of the tape helps the scar flatten and fade. The tape also protects the fresh scars from UV radiation which is very, very bad for fresh scars. Facial incisions usually do not need tape but they do need sunscreen, sun glasses, a good hat or preferably all three until they are faded.
Thanks for reading! Dr. Lisa Lynn Sowder
@lisalynnsowder
