How to look after a scar in the first six weeks

Almost everyone is told to massage the scar. Almost nobody is told when to start, how hard, for how long, or what it should feel like while they do it. So people either skip it or overdo it, and both are avoidable.

Nothing below replaces what your surgeon told you. Where the two differ, follow your surgeon.

First, the part that is not massage

Until the wound is fully closed and you have been cleared, scar care is mostly protection.

• Keep it clean and dry exactly as the clinic instructed.
• Leave scabs alone. Picking one is how a thin line becomes a wide one.
• Keep it out of the sun and keep it covered outdoors. New scar tissue marks easily.
• Wear the compression you were given, for as long as you were told.
• Put nothing on it that the clinic has not approved, including oils and creams bought because a stranger online recommended them.

What to look at, once a day

Thirty seconds in decent light. You are not hunting for problems so much as learning what normal looks like on you, so that a change is obvious when it happens.

• The colour, and whether it is changing.
• Whether the line is flat, raised or sunken.
• Whether the skin around it moves when you move.
• Where it pulls, and during which movement.

Anything hot, spreading, opening or newly painful goes to your clinic the same day. That one is not a wait and see.

Once you are cleared to touch it

Ask for the date rather than guessing it, and ask which technique your surgeon prefers.

When it is time, the rules are short. Clean hands. Little and often beats one long session. Enough pressure to move the skin, never enough to hurt it or leave it red. Work the tissue around the scar as well as the line itself. Stop if it stings, and stop for the day if the area is sore afterwards.

Numbness is common, and it does not mean you can press harder. It means you have less feedback, so go lighter than you think you need to.

Six weeks is a milestone, not a finish line

A scar keeps changing long after the wound has closed, which is the part nobody mentions. What you are doing in these first weeks is protecting it and keeping the tissue around it moving. Consistency does more here than intensity.

If you would rather not do it alone

Scar work is a series rather than one visit, and the useful part is often the home routine you leave with. At a first appointment we look at how the scar moves, where it pulls and what stage it is at, and I will tell you honestly what a series can and cannot change.