It helped with my small icepicks. I have a linear scar that it didn't help with at all and another one that is circular but not sure what type of scar. The little ones will fill in nicely. I also noticed it worked on my older scars but not new ones.

Hi Kristyan,

I have moderate (almost deep) rolling scars all over my cheeks, some shallow boxcar scars on my forehead and temples as well as mild ice picks below my eyes.

I've gone for three 2.5mm Dermapen sessions (January, March and May) and 9 weeks after my third session, I would say that the improvement for the boxcars and rolling scars is about 30-40%. As for the small ice picks, the improvement is about 25%. Some of the small scars which filled in are now back to their original state. As for topicals, I use retin-a 0.05% and vitamin C serum.

After reading robertitoo's and 19lee's posts about subcision, i've decided to opt for the subcision + suctioning route. I understand that needling may not work for tethered scars (which is what I seem to have). Needling only works well if your scars are untethered.

My first subcision (might include excision for icepicks) is in 2 weeks' time and the subsequent session is 6 weeks after the first. I'm hoping for more improvement than needling.

After my two subcisions + suctioning, i will do some dermarolling to help even out the untethered scars.

I live in Singapore if you would like to have the details of my dermatologist for subcision.

My advice is for you to try the following:

1) Read up on subcision + suctioning on this forum. If i had known about subcision + suctioning a year ago, I would have skipped the 6 months of needling.

2) If subcision is too expensive, try individual needling for your ice picks.

3)Dermarolling/dermastamping for your boxcar scars + suctioning

Owndoc.com has some useful info on needling.

http://owndoc.com/dermarolling/needling-instrument-needle-length-and-dermaneedling-product-guide/

To be honest I haven't seen much or any improvement with a 2mm dermastamp. I've had like 5 treatments too. I remember reading somewhere that the holes made from microneedling will heal mostly in the same form of the skin surrounding the hole. So even if you needle scarred skin, the holes will still regenerate as mostly scar tissue. I think it's best to combine it with subcision like Robertitoo. He had really good results and even said the he didn't see much improvement on just microneedling alone.

In theory it sounds like it should work. If you are creating repeated wounds, you would think that the body has to regenerate the injuries somehow. That said, I've seen only a handful of really convincing photos that did NOT seem doctored in some way.

At the end of the day, I would say microneedling, dermarolling, whatever you want to call it, is more of a adjunctive technique. Meaning that it should be done in conjunction with other methods like subcision, which does most of the heavy lifting for scars. I would not count on it as the only or even the main component of your treatment.

Is subcision still considered ineffective for ice pick scarring? Just a note, I did 2 aggressive dermarolling in 2009, used numbing cream and all that back then...I noticed my ice picks for shallower and many remodeled into different types of scars, like boxscars