Hi All,
I had a really bad acne breakout four years ago that left significant scarring. I've had four CO2 procedures which probably helped 50%. I have read positive things about recell in conjunction with dermabrasion or laser resurfacing and I am thinking about flying to Europe this summer to have a procedure done. Do you have any doctors that you would recommend? I think this finally may get me over the hump and to a stage where I am confident and can live the life I want to live without living in fear or my acne scars.
Hi All,
I had a really bad acne breakout four years ago that left significant scarring. I've had four CO2 procedures which probably helped 50%. I have read positive things about recell in conjunction with dermabrasion or laser resurfacing and I am thinking about flying to Europe this summer to have a procedure done. Do you have any doctors that you would recommend? I think this finally may get me over the hump and to a stage where I am confident and can live the life I want to live without living in fear or my acne scars.
dont bother with recell its hyped up for acne scars continue getting co2 procedures.
Please don't get dermabrasion. And Hope01 is right, recell helps more with the healing process and preventing complications than it does the actual scarring. I don't think its worth it. If co2 laser has helped you before I don't see why not continue with that, however you could also try subcision + suction depending on your scars. Much cheaper,less downtime, nearly risk free and much better results if you have deeper scarring.
Hi.... I"m glad you've had some success with co2 lasers. Fifty percent improvement is actually quite significant if you've only had co2 lasers alone, and not in conjunction with other modalities. Depending on your type of scarring, less expensive and time-tested methods like subcision and suction are quite effective.
As for dermabrasion, I've had spot dermabrasion (not full face) and while it did give me quite a bit of improvement to some of my worst scars, the recovery is intense. I think it's about the most aggressive thing you can do for acne scarring. Sometimes, if your body does not heal well it could very well leave worse scarring. If done too deeply, the results could be devastating. There was some girl here a while back that had dermabrasion and her doctor clearly went way, way too deep and the resultant scarring was significant. It's extremely technique sensitive, and I would absolutely only go to the best to have it done. That said, when it works, it works quite well depending on the type of scarring. It works well for scars that have a sharp edge, or raised shoulders as it helps to plane them down.
A handful of people here have done a combo of resurfacing plus Recell, and unfortunately I don't think very many people gave us any long term updates. It is a lot of money though from what I've read. I think of it along the same lines as PRP here in the US, where there's not a whole lot of research for acne scarring.
The thing with laser resurfacing is the first time I had 25% improvement, followed by 10%, 10% and 5%. My body has developed a tolerance to this specific laser. Should I try another? Why write off recell completely? It looks like the future of acne scarring. Thanks for your input I really appreciate it
I just feel like dermabrasion is the only thing that gets to the root of the scarring, while recell will make the healing process quicker.
I also have rolling acne scars all along my cheeks that are difficult to treat and stick out like a sore thumb in bad, overhead lighting. It's devastating
If you have rolling scars definitely go with subcision. Recell is great but is being used more for burns right now. What we are dealing with is loss of tissue as well as very dense, fibrotic scar tissue that for many people, needs to be manually pulled from the the deeper layers of skin. Seriously, subcision is so cheap compared to lasers... the worst that can happen is it doesn't do much for you. If you go through a lot of acne scar success stories, nearly all of them involve subcision.
As far as lasers go, I think C02 lasers are the most powerful lasers on the market. Of course, there are many brands of co2 laser, but I think the top ones are Total FX, Fraxel Repair, Smartskin DOT, and Mixto. Among those, the most powerful is probably Total FX.
As for dermabrasion, there's nothing really that complex about it. Think of your skin as hills and valleys. Dermabrasion basically takes down all the high points (the hills or shoulders of scars) so that it's shallower and closer to the depth of the valleys. Unfortunately you just cannot sand down that much skin because anything deeper than the reticular dermis and you will scar. There is a limit to how deep resurfacing can go. A better approach would be to fill the valleys, and get them as close as possible to the level of the hills. Then, when you do a resurfacing procedure it doesn't have to go as deep. Subcision and suction is well suited for this "elevating" of scars. There's also a pretty high "unpredictability" factor with dermabrasion which is a function of how you heal and the doctor's technique.
In general rolling scars do pretty well with subcision.
I had recell treatment done for my hypertrophic scars exactly 1 month back,, as of now Iam not at all happy with how it looks and doctor says it would improve over time and it might take upto 18months.
one thing i would like to point about this treatment is both these doctors and avita are too much money oriented.I had the treatment done in Australia. I had to pay $1500 for recell kit and dermabrasion, $500 for needling, $250 for consultation, $5000 as doctors fee, $1000 procedure fee, $600 accomodation fee by hospital though there was no overnight stay. so totally 9100AUD. Doctors fee was just too much to bear, understand that it is a very simple procedure done under local anasthaesia. Before doing the treatment I also thought of talking to some dermatologist about the treatment so that i would be able to save up on the doctors fee and some other unnecessary fees,but the doctor I spoke to was like she needs to see someone doing the procedure to learn about it and also the recell kit was unavailable in my country, may be if a dermatologist does the same procedure it would cost less than 3000AUD , (1500AUD for recell kit + 1500AUD procedure fee).
I would also like to share that recell is not a new revolutionary treatment, but a treatment from years back called melanocyte transplantation, but now avita has just commercialised it maximum with the recell tag . Scientific studies has proved it a failiure on many vitilgo patients. Here is one of the link http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352241015000213 . Still might be worth a try if it was much cheaper, for this price (RECELL) its definitely a scam.
melanocyte transplantation is done by many clinics for much..much cheaper price, which is indeed the same treatment as recell, sad to see that these people are taking advantage of people with skin problems.