Micro-needling versus Fractional CO2 Laser therapy in treatment of atrophic post-burn scars / Waleed Esmail Mohammed Aldhahebi ; Supervised Amira Amin Zayed , Heba Mohamed Mashaly , Heba Mohammed Abdelraheem

Thesis (Ph.D.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Medicine - Department of Dermatology and Venerology

To evaluate and compare the efficacy of fractional CO₂ laser and microneedling therapy in the treatment of atrophic burn scars clinically, histopathologically and histochemically.Methodology: Twenty five patients with atrophic burn scars were enrolled in the study. They performed 4 ablative fractional CO₂ laser and microneedling sessions 4 weeks apart. Clinical evaluation was performed before and following the last session of ablative fractional CO₂ laser and microneedling by using Scar scales, the Vancouver Scar Scale (VSS). Routine haematoxylin and eosin, Masson's trichrome and orcein stains were used to evaluate the appearance and pattern of dermal collagen and elastic fibres , also Image analysis was used to quantitatively assess the density of collagen and elastic fibres before and following the last session of ablative fractional CO₂ laser and microneedling Result: VSS showed no statistically significant improvement following treatment by ablative fractional CO₂ laser and microneedling (P<0.005). Collagen and elastic fibres showed no statistically significant improvement as regards appearance and pattern. As regard collagen density , it showed statistically significant improvement following ablative fractional CO₂ laser while elastic showed significant improvement following both. No significant correlation existed between clinical scores and histopathological / histochemical parameters

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