Stretch marks and scars — why an old mark responds differently from a fresh one

Published: 2026-09-05

What determines how a stretch mark or scar responds to treatment, why my first question is how old it is, and what the plasma method can achieve — and what it cannot.

The first question I ask

When someone shows me stretch marks, my first question is not "how many" but "when".

How old is this mark. Because an old mark responds differently from a fresh one, and that is not a technical footnote — it governs everything I can tell you about the result, about the number of sessions and about what is reasonable to expect.

This is the thing I say in advance rather than afterwards. If you hear an estimate from me, you will hear it before we begin.

What affects the response

Three things come up almost every time:

• The age of the mark. A fresh mark, still at the stage where it looks red or pink, usually responds better than an old one that has already settled into a pale tone.
• The depth. A deeply indented mark takes more sessions than a shallow one, and sometimes the realistic outcome is improvement in texture and in relief rather than disappearance.
• The location and the state of the skin around it. The same method behaves differently on an abdomen, on thighs and on arms, and that is checked at the analysis rather than assumed in advance.

Scars follow the same principles. An acne scar, a surgical scar, a scar from an injury — each has its own texture and its own height, and those are the two things the treatment works on.

What is actually done

The work here uses the plasma method. The treatment acts on the texture of the mark and on its height — that is, on the way light falls across it and on the difference between its surface and the skin around it.

Fractional plasma is the main tool for scars and texture, and it is sometimes combined with fractional RF or with microneedling, according to what the analysis found. On the abdomen, when the goal includes tightening and not only the marks themselves, hot plasma comes in too.

It is almost always a series. Change that rests on collagen building accumulates over weeks, so a single stretch-mark session is usually the start of a process rather than the process itself.

I do not promise the mark will disappear. I say what I think can be achieved, and then I work on it.

What I will not tell you

I will not tell you that stretch marks vanish completely. There is improvement, sometimes substantial improvement, and there are cases where a mark becomes far less noticeable — but a promise of complete disappearance is exactly the kind of promise that later sends women to me disappointed by somewhere else.

I will not start a treatment on skin that is not ready. A tendency to scarring or to hyperpigmentation, active infection in the area, pregnancy and breastfeeding, and certain medical conditions and medications — all of these affect suitability, and some postpone or rule out a treatment. That is checked at the consultation before anything is booked, and sometimes it leads to a referral onwards.

And I will not work on a fresh scar that is still healing. That is a question of timing, and sometimes the right answer is simply to wait.

When to start

If the marks are fresh there is no sense rushing before the skin has settled — but no sense waiting years either. The way to know is to come for an analysis and ask. You can see all the treatments at the clinic or read how I work.