I actually do believe in miracles. But as far as I know, completely removing a true scar would currently require one.
That doesn't mean every mark left after an injury is permanent. Some wounds heal without scarring. Others may leave redness or a change in pigmentation that gradually settles until you can barely, or no longer, see where the injury was.
But a true scar is different. A scar forms when damaged tissue is repaired with scar tissue rather than being restored exactly as it was before. Once that has happened, we currently don't have a treatment that can make that scar tissue disappear completely and return the skin to exactly what it was before.
So I would be cautious about any product or service that promises to “remove” a scar completely. That doesn't necessarily mean there is nothing useful behind the treatment, but I would want to understand exactly what is being promised, what evidence there is, and whether those claims are realistic. If you're trusting someone with your scar, I think honesty about what can and cannot be achieved matters.
Before-and-after photographs can be helpful, but they don't always tell the whole story either. Scars naturally change with time. Photographs can be taken under different conditions, and the person may have had other treatments alongside the one being promoted. Most importantly, their scar isn't your scar. The same treatment won't necessarily produce the same result for you.
But here's the much better news.
A scar doesn't have to disappear completely for treatment to make a very significant difference.
Some scars can become flatter, softer, paler, more mobile, more comfortable and much less noticeable. Sometimes the improvement can be dramatic; sometimes it may be relatively small - but even a small physical change can make a surprisingly big difference to the person living with it.
And there is another kind of change that matters too. A scar itself may remain, while the effect it has on your life changes enormously. Something that once affected what you wore, where you went, what you did or how you felt around other people may gradually become much less important.
So no, at the moment I can’t make a true scar disappear. But that is very different from saying that nothing can change. In fact, I’ve seen many times how changing a scar can change someone’s life — which is where the Scarchange motto, “Changing scars, changing lives”, comes from.
And I’ll leave you with an African proverb I particularly like:
“If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping in a closed room with a mosquito.”
Sometimes a small change can make a very big difference.