Burns Scars, Burns Scarring

In treating burns scars, your goal, should you survive it, is getting rid of its aftermath with the least damage to your dermis, scarification to your skin, impairment to your pelt, or harm to your hide. In other words, you first want to live through the experience, contain the pain, and then, to the greatest extent possible, get rid of the evidence.

A burns scars can result from:

• Thermal contact with an open flame
• Getting splattered with scalding water or steam
• Making physical contact with a really, really hot object (and by that we mean something like a frying pan, not someone you've met at Hooter's; the latter is a subject for another, very different, lesson in "how-to-get-rid-of").

It can also be produced by:

• Spending too much time in the sun with too few body coverings
• Using your body to complete an electrical circuit
• Getting frostbitten while tramping about in the North Woods barefoot
• Deluding yourself into thinking a can of sulfuric acid you've just dumped into your bathtub is really a container of bath oil, thereby giving yourself a radical chemical peel when you lower yourself into it.

The severity of a burns scars is a factor of how many layers of skin you have injured. If only the top layer (epidermis) is affected, it's a superficial burn which, while it may be somewhat painful, generally cures itself in a matter of days. The superficial partial thickness burn reaches the second layer of skin (dermis), typically producing a blister; it's much less serious than a deep partial thickness burn which may go deep enough to destroy nerve endings and sweat glands. The worst kind is the full thickness burn, which may go all the way through two layers of skin and down to muscle and bone.

Serious burns scars can kill. They require medical treatment, possibly even hospitalization. Getting rid of them is up to a doctor, not you. Extensive full thickness burns are difficult to treat, the prognosis generally is not good, and they may represent the most painful long-term trauma a body can suffer. And you will never get rid of the scarring. So, by all means, try to avoid them.

Minor superficial burns are another story. These are so commonplace that chances are you will apply treatment yourself. Keep in mind that how you treat the burn will play a large part in whether it is going to leave something of itself behind on your body long past the time it has healed.

you were a student at Old Heidelberg University and that they are an emblem of honor. This story is unlikely to fly if you are a young female bookkeeper at a Midwest trucking company. Your best bet would be to obtain and use something called cosmetic camouflage which can correct irregular contours, correct discolored skin, and conceal scars. Or you can try cosmetic surgery with us.