How to Heal a Keloid
Keloids are unpleasant looking and sometimes painful scars that result when the body overreacts to an injury, producing a scar many times larger than the original wound. Keloids also have the potential to become infected, which can pose a serious health risk and usually necessitates surgery. While many of the common treatments for keloids can only be performed at a hospital by a trained health care professional, there are some things that you can do at home to help heal a keloid. Unfortunately, most of them are of limited effectiveness.
- Difficulty:
- Moderate
Instructions
Things You'll Need
- Mederma
- Contractubex / Hexilak Gel
- Silicone gel wound coverings
- Bandages
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Treating a Keloid
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1
Apply compression bandages to the keloid as soon as it is detected. While doing so may take perhaps as long as a year to take effecit, it should reduce the size of the scar significantly. This treatment works best on newly formed scars and is the best way to prevent further new scars from forming.
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2
Treat the keloid with Mederma. Mederma is a topical gel made from onions. While its effectiveness is unproven in humans (it has been conditionally demonstrated on rabbits by a A.S. Saulis, J.H. Mogford, and T.A. Mustoe at Northwestern University Medical School in 2002), it is claimed to be able to reduce the size of scars as well as make them softer and less noticeable.
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3
Treat the scar with Contractubex or Hexilak Gel. Both of these chemicals work to reduce the size of scars and are often prescribed after surgery to prevent the formation of a scar and are quite effective.
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4
Wrap the scar in moistened wound coverings made of silicone gel. This should reduce the size of the keloid over time, although it may increase itchiness.
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1
Tips & Warnings
All keloid treatments that you can do yourself take a significant amount of time to fully take effect and may not be able to remove the scar completely. Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet treatment for keloids.
If you try all of these techniques and you still cannot reduce the size of your scar or you think it may be infected, talk to a doctor. A doctor my freeze it off, use radiation treatments to remove it, remove it surgically, or prescribe steroid injections or new medications (the use of some drugs commonly used against autoimmune conditions may also be effective against keloids).
