Treat the acne first. Scars later.

Derm here.

One thing I see a lot is people wanting to jump straight into scar treatments the moment they notice texture. Usually the first question is about CO2 laser.

But if the acne is still active or inflamed, treating scars at that stage rarely gives good results.

New scars are still forming.

The first job is always calming the skin down and getting the acne under control. Once the inflammation settles, the skin behaves very differently and scar treatments start working much better.

Also not all scars respond the same way to the same procedure.

Many of the shallow rolling and boxcar scars we see in Indian skin respond better to treatments like subcision, TCA CROSS or microneedling RF. CO2 laser gets talked about a lot online but its not always the most effective option for this type of scarring.

In acne and scarring, the sequence matters more than the treatment itself.

First control the inflammation.

Then treat the scars.

Getting this order wrong is one of the biggest reasons people feel like scar treatments “didnt work”.