Abstract :
Background: Acne vulgaris is a common dermatological disorder affecting teenagers and young adults with the consequence of scarring. As acne is considered as a normal occurrence and neglected or delayed treatment of severe acne lead to cosmetically disfiguring scarring leading to much psychological trauma to youngsters. Acne scarring can be atrophic or hypertrophic. There are multitude of treatment options for atrophic acne scars like dermabrasion, chemical peels and lasers. But these cosmetic procedures are have drawbacks like requiring fine skills and long downtime (dermabrasion), or expensive for most of the population(laser). Microneedling using dermaroller is an inexpensive safe therapeutic option for the Indian skin type with less complication. The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of microneedling (dermaroller) in different types of atrophic acne scar and it’s complications.
Materials and Methods: A descriptive study was performed using 30 patients with atrophic acne scar treated with microneedling for a period of two years. Details of duration, site, type and depth of acne scar along with skin types was recored. Patients were given dermaroller treatment for 4 session, each spaced at one month interval and results assessed at the end of each session and at end of six months.
Results: In this study, 30 patients with atrophic acne scars of grade 2 and 3 were treated with microneedling therapy and efficacy and complication of this therapy were evaluated. These patients had all three types of atrophic scars- rolling, ice- pick and boxcar, these 27 patients showed 50 % improvement in their scar score at the end of the study (6 months). Among above mentioned scar types, rolling and boxcar scar showed improvement by 47.42% and 65.40% respectively at the end of the study, whereas ice-pick scars showed no significant improvement. According to the modified acne scar scoring system, 55.6% of the patients had
improvement in their scar scoring between 41 and 50% (good response) and 44.4 % had improvement of more than 50 % (very good response). All patients were satisfied with the outcome of the procedure.
Conclusion: Microneedling is a safe, cost effective, innovative procedure in the treatment armamentarium of acne scars without major complications. This is found to be safe to use in Fitzpatrick type IV and V scars. However, further studies are necessary to validate these findings.
Keyword :
Microneedling, Percutaneous collagen induction, Acne scars.