Dr Chow Yuen Ho’s Pimple and Scars Blog

04 Jul Dr Chow Yuen Ho’s Pimple and Scars Blog

Hi there,

After having treated so many pimple and scar ridden patients over these years that I’ve been working in TCS clinic,  I’ve decided to publish a blog dedicated solely to this area of interest.  There have been so many enquiries about how to treat acne problems and their related scarring that perhaps its time to create a knowledge base to really give people the information they need to empower them to treat their acne problems.

I now that there are so many people who visit my page, and quite a lot of them actually call up to seek help, but there are still some who don’t and I suppose they have gotten help elsewhere, but preferably from a doctor who can diagnose and treat the problem.  If they havent yet gotten help, I sincerely hope they are not still struggling with their acne and scars unnecessarily, because ACNE AND ACNE SCARS CAN BE TREATED!

OK, so enough introduction about acne, and maybe a little bit about myself.

I’m 40 this year, graduated from National University of Singapore with a MBBS degree and went on to do clinical rotations in Dermatology in SGH under my most respected mentor and teacher Dr T Thirumoorthy, whom I’ll always remember and revere.  Dr Thiru sparked my interest in treating dermatological conditions and I developed a special interest in treating acne and acne scars.  This probably stemmed from my own affliction with acne during my army days.  I remember (not so fondly) working in an armor unit 8 SAB.  For the army boys who have been in armor before, you will know exactly how dirty an army camp really is.  The dust cloud that gets thrown up behind an armored personnel carrier blasting past at 40km/h settles on everything, tables, chairs and your skin…  I remember sneaking away as often as I could to desperately wash off that red dust from my pimply face, but it didn’t really help and my face was covered with pustules and zits.  Later on, my face became covered with depressed scars from those acne days, and that gave me a somewhat “rugged” look 🙁

It wasn’t until I got admitted to University that I finally chanced upon a medical consultation.  I was seeing the NUS doctor Dr Patrick at the Yusof Ishak House, I think for a problem of stiff neck, but he suggested that I treat my acne also.  My reaction was like “really?  acne can be treated by doctors?  Up till then, I had been spending (quite a large proportion) of my measly SAF allowance on totally useless skincare products that only helped a little.  I had tried scrubs, creams, serums, peels, you name it!  So here was this doctor that was telling me that one cream could solve my problem.  What made it worse was that this cream did not even come in a new tube, apparently half of it had been squeezed out for another patient.  So there I was, with a half used tube of a medicine called A irol (it’s a R oche manufactured equivalent of R etin-A) and a single line of advice: “apply whole face every night”.

I was sceptical, but I did what I was told (in those days people actually listened to what doctors advised) and miraculously it worked!  My skin dried up and pimples stopped appearing!  I was flabbergasted because all my efforts in the past seemed draconian, but had been simply dwarfed by this half tube of cream (that it was rather cheaply bought under government subsidy didn’t help!).  It was then that I realized that acne was actually a MEDICAL PROBLEM.  Yes.  Me, a medical student, only then, realizing that.

But I was still covered with scars, and pock marks, and although I didn’t openly admit, it secretly bothered me.  I didn’t seek any treatment for that, and it was all the way 20 years later that I did finally find a solution to those scars, which was fractional CO2 laser and Infini.  After continued optimization and pushing the limits of these lasers and equipment, I finally understood the optimal settings for delivering an effective, but safe treatment that produced results for me, and my patients.

One thing I realized in my years of treating patients with Acne is that patients need to be educated to be equipped to solve their problems.  So many times, I’ve come across patients who see me for acne ridden skin, and claiming that they have failed conventional treatments and creams.  When I review the creams that they are using (which is part of my usual consultation), I realized that they had the same complaints.  “oh this cream is too drying” or “I only apply this cream to the spots” (when it should be applied to the whole face) or “I tried this cream for 2 days and it didn’t help” or “this skin gave me redness”.  My experience is that you need to go through a period where the skin is just slightly on the dry side, and that will really accelerate the resolution of the acne.  Kind of like when you go to a country with cooler, drier climate, your acne improves tremendously!  So really if I could persuade the patient to stick with the treatment and endure the dryness for a few weeks, they would really see a great improvement in their acne!  The flip side of this is that it takes time to explain this to patients.  I actually created a powerpoint presenation that I use for my patients in the consult, so that I can get these concepts through to them easily.

OK I think that’s enough for this first post, but in the following posts, I will cover some very common topics like how to cleanse the skin, what foods to avoid and what products you can use to improve acne.  If you like this page, subscribe to the mailing list and get updated everytime there’s a new post!

Happy reading!