When it comes to skin treatments, PRP is now one of the most popular procedures. What most patients don’t know, is that PRP isn’t only useful in cases of antiaging, it can also help to address scarring, including acne scarring.
What are scars?
Before we explore PRP for scars, it helps to understand what scars are and how they form.
Whilst visible scars can be frustrating, they are simply part of your body’s healing process. They usually develop from an injury or trauma to the skin, but they can also come because of acne.
When the skin is wounded, a complex reaction to heal the damage is initiated by the circulatory system. The growth factors, within the blood and especially the platelets, encourage new tissue including collagen to be produced to repair the skin. Collagen is vital to skin health, helping it to heal following trauma and strengthening it to protect the body from infection.
Now, when wounds or skin traumas heal, depending on the severity of the injury, and the amount of collagen produced, the colour and texture of the scar may appear different from the surrounding skin and may be slightly raised.
How to use PRP for Scars
When a wound occurs, the body’s natural healing process is immediately triggered. This healing process is rather complex, but it involves sending blood cells, and collagen to the affected area to heal the damaged tissue.
There are four main stages to healing, including.
• Hemostasis: This occurs after the bleeding has stopped, and the blood begins to coagulate turning from a liquid to a more gel-like substance. This helps the blood vessels seal, to prevent further blood loss.
• Inflammation: This occurs when chemicals are released into the wound, causing the area around the wound to become red and swollen, and painful. In more severe cases, the body temperature may also begin to rise to help fight off any further infection.
• Dispersion: This is the process in which the body begins to create new tissue with the concentration of collagen and other growth factors in the area. New blood vessels are created and carry nutrients and oxygen to the wound to further aid the healing process.
• Maturation: This is the final stage where new skin forms over the wound. The extent of the injury will determine how long it takes for the inner tissue to fully heal, but the patient may be left with some visible scarring on the surface of the skin.
PRP treatment is used to aid tissue regeneration and stimulate further collagen production to minimise the appearance of scarring. The blood contains several key nutrients that contribute to overall body and skin health, including platelets that support coagulation, plasma that carries specific nutrients, and growth factors.
The first step in any PRP treatment is to extract healthy blood from the arm and separate each of the components from the blood using a special medical device & a centrifuge. The separated plasma & concentrated platelets (including their growth factors) are then injected back into the treatment area, which kickstarts the body’s healing process and helps minimise the appearance of scarring.
Treatment takes between 20 & 40 minutes, and because it uses nothing but one’s own blood, it carries little to no risk of infection and requires no downtime.
Directly after treatment, some patients may experience slight tenderness to the skin and minor bruising, but this should clear within one week of treatment.
For best results, more than one treatment may be required.
For more information on PRP, please contact RegenLab.
