Wound Healing After Skin Surgery

This video describes what you can expect from the wound healing process after skin surgery.

Everyone's skin heals a little differently, but we will address some common questions patients have after surgery.

How long after a skin injury or procedure does it take for a wound to fully heal? One week, one month, six months, or more than a year?

It takes one to two years for your surgical wound to completely heal.

Wound healing is a complicated process that involves multiple steps over one to two years. First, your body brings help to the area through inflammation. The arrival of your body's natural healing cells may cause bruising, swelling, redness, and lumpiness.

You may also note tightness, soreness, and numbness during this early stage. All of these changes are normal parts of the healing process and will improve over time.

After the inflammatory stage, your skin rebuilds itself by forming a scar. Even when the wound appears to be healed at the surface, it is still weaker than surrounding skin. Depending on the location of your scar, you may need to avoid strenuous activity for two to three weeks.

Scars continue to become stronger and less noticeable over the course of one to two years.

Skin injured deeper than the top layer of skin can heal without a scar, true or false?

False. There is no such thing as scarless skin surgery. All skin surgery results in a scar.

At the end of the process, there may be some differences between your scar and surrounding skin.

Here's an example of a patient undergoing skin surgery. The middle photo shows the wound early in the healing process, with redness, swelling, and lumpiness. The scar will be most visible during the first year and then fade over time, but it will never go away completely.

In this example, we again see that scars continue to slowly improve over time.

Together with your surgeon, you can help reduce the appearance of your scar over time with the wound care described previously and some simple options described in the next section.

What may help to improve the appearance of a scar? Sun protection, massage, silicon products, or all of the above?

D, all of the above. We will describe each of these methods in the coming sections.

Sun protection.

Exposure to sunlight may make the scar heal more slowly, become more red or darkened permanently.

To prevent these changes, it is important to apply a broad-spectrum sunscreen that covers UVA and UVB rays with SPF 30 or higher. Sunscreen can be applied directly over your surgical wound as soon as the skin has healed over and you are no longer applying a bandage.

Other methods of sun protection include wearing a hat with a wide brim, wearing sun-protective clothing with UPF 30 or above, and staying in the shade from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., when the sun is most intense.

All of these approaches will help your surgical site heal and prevent future skin cancer.

Massage.

Massaging your scar can make it less hard or lumpy. Most patients should wait about a month after surgery to start massaging their scar.

You can use two or three fingers to gently massage the scar for one to two minutes, up to three times per day, either in a circular, up-and-down, or side-to-side motion.

And finally, silicon products keep the scar moisturized and may help improve redness and texture over time.

There are two options: silicon sheets and silicon gels. Both are available over the counter without prescription.

The silicon sheets can be cut to the size of the scar and left on overnight. They can also be washed daily and reused.

Silicon gels can be applied directly to the skin and allowed to dry.

We hope this tool helped you prepare for what to expect from wound healing after skin surgery.

If you have any questions or concerns, talk with your surgeon.