How To Get Rid Keloids On Piercings

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How

Several treatment options can help remove or shrink keloids, bulbs of scar tissue that form on piercings. This includes procedures at the dermatologist’s office and home remedies. You may also be able to prevent a keloid with prompt action.

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Keloids are overgrowths of scar tissue caused by trauma to your skin. They’re common after ear piercings and can form on both the lobe and cartilage of your ear. Keloids can range in color from light pink to dark brown.

As wounds heal, fibrous scar tissue starts to replace old skin tissue. Sometimes your body makes too much scar tissue, leading to keloids. This extra tissue starts to spread out from the original wound, causing a bump or small mass that’s larger than the original piercing.

On the ear, keloids typically begin as small round bumps around the piercing site. Sometimes they develop quickly, but usually they appear several months after you pierce your ear. Your keloid may continue growing slowly for the next few months.

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Keloids are particularly hard to get rid of. Even when they’re successfully removed, they tend to reappear eventually. Most dermatologists recommend a combination of different treatments for long-lasting results.

Your doctor can surgically remove a keloid from your ear using a scalpel. However, this creates a new wound that will likely develop a keloid as well. When treated with surgery alone, keloids usually come back. That’s why doctors typically recommend other treatments, in addition to surgery, that prevent the keloid from coming back.

If you have surgery to remove an ear keloid, your doctor may recommend wearing a pressure earring after the procedure. These are earrings that place uniform pressure on part of your ear, which can help prevent a keloid from forming after surgery.

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However, pressure earrings are also very uncomfortable for most people, and they need to be worn for 16 hours a day for 6 to 12 months.

There are also several nonsurgical treatment options you can try. While you might not be able to completely get rid of a keloid, many of these options can help to significantly shrink it.

Doctors can inject medications directly into your keloid to help shrink it, relieve symptoms, and make it softer. You’ll receive injections every three to four weeks until the keloid improves. This usually takes about four office visits.

Keloids On Nose Piercings And Ear Piercings Can Be Common

According to the American Academy of Dermatology, about 50 to 80 percent of keloids shrink after treatment with injections. However, they also note many people experience a reoccurrence within five years.

Cryotherapy treatments freeze the keloid. They work best when combined with other treatments, especially steroid injections. Your doctor may recommend three or more cryotherapy treatments, either before or after receiving your series of steroid injections.

Laser treatments can reduce the size and fade the color of keloids. Like most other treatments, laser therapy is usually done in conjunction with another method.

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A ligature is a surgical thread that’s tied around the base of larger keloids. Over time, the thread cuts into the keloid and causes it to fall off. You’ll need to have a new ligature tied on every three to four weeks until your keloid falls off.

While there are no clinically proven home remedies that can completely remove keloids, there are a few treatments you can use to reduce their appearance.

Show that silicone gels can improve the texture and fade the color of keloids. One study found that 34 percent of raised scars became significantly flatter after daily application of a silicone gel.

Keloid

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Also show that silicone can help prevent keloid formation, so your doctor might recommend using it after surgery as well. You can buy both silicone gel and silicone gel patches online without a prescription.

One study found that an onion extract gel can reduce the height and symptoms of raised scars. However, it didn’t have much of an effect on the overall appearance of scars.

Keloids are hard to treat. If you’re prone to developing them, follow these tips to reduce your risk of developing a new one:

How To Get Rid Of Keloids On Piercings

Keloids are hard to treat, so it’s best to seek out advice from your doctor. Most people with keloids, either on their ears or elsewhere, respond best to a combination of treatments.

If you know you tend to develop them, there are also steps you can take to try to prevent future keloids from forming. It’s best to consult a dermatologist, who may suggest a combination of several different treatments.

Has strict sourcing guidelines and relies on peer-reviewed studies, academic research institutions, and medical associations. We avoid using tertiary references. You can learn more about how we ensure our content is accurate and current by reading our editorial policy.Scarring is a common concern for people who are thinking of getting a body piercing. Though, not every type of scarring is the same.

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One type of scarring you might not know much about is known as keloid scarring. Keloids are unusually prominent and visible scars that can form when your skin is healing from a piercing or other types of wounds.

A keloid is a raised scar, but what makes it different from other forms of scar tissue is that it doesn’t just cover a wound. Instead, it spreads beyond it, usually growing much larger than the injury itself.

Piercing

Keloid scars are also unique in how long they take to form. While a wound will scar over fairly quickly, a keloid scar might only appear months after the skin had been initially injured. Once it has appeared, it can also grow larger, sometimes spreading further across the skin surface for years.

The Piercing Keloid: Earlobe Keloids And Cartilage Keloids

They also vary in their coloring. Some are very light pink, while others will have a far darker pigment, often much darker than the rest of your skin.

There are multiple ways to get rid of keloid piercing scars, but which one you use will depend on a few factors. You should consult with a Board Certified dermatologist. They will help you decide on the best procedure based on the keloid’s location, the size of the scarring, and how long you’ve had it.

One of the least invasive and lowest impact ways of treating keloid bumps is by regularly applying moisturizing oils to it, such asavocado oil.

Ear Keloid Treatment

These oil treatments, if effective, will soften the scar tissue and make them appear less prominent. Note, however, that they will not eliminate keloid scar tissue. The strategy is to massage the oil into the scar tissue to help break it up and soften it.

As this just makes the keloids a bit more discrete rather than getting rid of them, they’re best suited for small ones, like the ones that form as a result of acne. Cryotherapy is not the treatment of choice for anyone with skin of color as it also damages pigment cells and can cause a white scar.

Several medications can be injected into the raised scar tissue to treat keloids, including interferon, verapamil, fluorouracil and various forms of steroid injections. Their effectiveness and use in treating keloids, however, has not been studied extensively.

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Corticosteroids are the only medicines that have been subject to a lot of studies and are commonly used to treat keloid scars. These steroid injections are often used alongside another treatment, like cryotherapy.

EAR

Cutting away the keloid scars, however, will leave you with a surgical incision that can itself cause a larger keloid to develop if you are prone to them. To prevent keloids from reoccurring after surgical treatment, follow the advice in the section below on ‘preventing keloid formation.’

Radiation therapyis another option for treating and eliminating keloids. This, however, is considered a bit more extreme than the alternatives. Due to the risks of cancer that come with radiation therapy, it’s usually offered only as a last resort, after all other methods have failed to significantly reduce the scar tissue.

How Do I Get Rid Of A Keloid On My Nose Piercing?

There is no sure-fire way to get rid of these types of scars, no matter how big or small. Treatments can minimize their appearance, but even then it’s common for them to return to a piercing site after they have been treated.

While there aren’t any clinically proven home remedies that can fully remove keloid scars, there are a select few treatments you can use in order to try and reduce their appearance.

Some clinical studiesshow that silicone gel application can improve the texture of keloids and fade their color. One study even found that34 percentof raised scars (hypertrophic scars, not keloids) became much flatter after silicone gel was applied daily.

Piercing Bump Treatment & Keloid Bump Remover

Not only do silicone gels potentially improve the appearance of keloids, but studieshave also shown that silicone can actually help to prevent keloid formation, too.

One studydiscovered that the application of an onion extract gel can reduce the height of raised scar tissue, although the overall appearance of the scar didn’t show huge improvements.

First, your ethnicity plays a role. Keloids are a more common form of scar tissue in skin

Keloid

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