Evaluation of Microneedling Therapy in Management of Facial Scars

Abstract

Background: 

Appearance and beauty always have been playing a major aspect of human's lives, regardless of the era. The desire for man to look better had led to various treatment modalities. One among them is microneedling therapy, also called as percutaneous collagen induction therapy or dermaroller therapy. Henceforth, the aim of the study was to evaluate the efficacy of microneedling therapy in the management of facial scars.

Methods: 

An observational clinical study was conducted with a total of 14 patients who needed treatment and presented to the out-patient department of Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery. The patients who were cooperative, motivated, and esthetically conscious with facial scars due to trauma, soft-tissue injury following incision and drainage, postsurgical scars, scars following surgery of cleft lip correction, and postacne scars were randomly selected.

Results: 

In the present study, a statistically significant difference was observed with pre- and postsurgical patient satisfaction scale (PSS) and observed satisfaction scale (OSS; P = 0.001). Preoperatively there were 64.3% with depressed scars and 35.7% with elevated scars. The clinical response of height of scar postoperatively was 100% flattening with the surrounding skin surface. Results showed that all atrophic and hypertrophic scars showed improvement, and color of the scar which was darker or lighter than the surrounding skin got the same color as the surrounding skin after microneedling therapy. Pain during the procedure was easily tolerable by the patient and no postoperative pain was noted.

Conclusion: 

Microneedling therapy can be considered as an effective modality of treatment for facial scars in patients with an added advantage of minimal downtime and effective improvement. It is simple and cost-effective technique in the treatment of facial scars.