Acne treatment has short term and long term goals. The purpose of short term goal should be to alleviate the symptoms and to heal the lesions. The long term goal should aim at limiting the disease,scar removal and enhancing the quality of life.
The treatment in most cases are prolonged. The severity of acne differs from person to person and so treatments also differ from person to person according physiology. The severity is categorized as mild acne,moderate acne and severe acne. Though many treatment options are available,the right combination treatment therapy has to be figured out by trial and error method.
The first step should be to prepare the patient mentally for the treatment by counseling. Acne patients generally are a depressed lot hence sympathetic care and support should be given to change their mindset.
There four steps to treatment of acne.They are as follows. Administration of anti microbial medication to reduce the number of bacteria in the hair follicles,removal of the blockage in the hair root canal,medication to reduce the rate of sebum production which is the original cause and reduction of acne inflammation by suitable medication.
The treatment of acne has two parts namely topical and systemic. Topical treatment deals with application of medication on the skin surface of the affected area and systemic treatment means oral medication.
Acne topical medications used are as follows. Preparations containing benzoyl peroxide,antiseptics and keratolytics,topical vitamin A preparations such as tretinonin,preparations containing azaleic acid such as skinoren,topical antibiotics such as tetracycline,erythromycin and clindamycin,topical retinoids such as Tazarotene and topical comedolytic which acts against comedones such as tretinoin,adapalene and isotretinoin.
The side effects of these topical retinoids are scaling of the skin surface and also the skin color of skin sensitive fair skinned people changes to pink. For the removal of blackheads abrasive preparations such as polyethylene beads or aluminium oxide. These substances clear blackheads by their abrasive action.
Systemic medications involves preparations containing antibiotics such as tetracycline,minocycline,doxycycline and erythromycin. This includes hormone therapy medication such as Dianette and sebum suppressing medications such as isotretinoin,spironolactone,cyproterone and ethinylestranol.
For many years now,the antibiotic tetracyclines has been the mainstay of treatment of moderate and severe acne. It has to be taken for another three months or more(depending on the severity of acne)to see further improvement. Slightly a higher dosage is given initially and when there is encouraging response,the dosage is reduced marginally. Tetracyclines improves the condition when taken regularly for four to eight weeks.
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