Background Many patients with keloids experience symptoms, such as pain and pruritus, and may present with significant psychosocial burden. However, no single therapeutic regimen has been firmly established for treatment of keloids. Objectives The aim of this study is to assess patients’ perspectives on their keloids after treatment by comparing preoperative and postoperative surveys. Methods All patients seen at the keloid clinic, both preoperatively and postoperatively, were contacted via phone calls. Participants completed the demographics, keloid characteristics, and pain and pruritus scales. Participants also completed all three portions (appearance, symptom, and psychosocial impact) of the SCAR-Q, a validated patient-reported outcome measure (PROM) questionnaire. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS Version 23 (IBM Corp., Armonk, N.Y.). Results Of the 60 patients who participated in the study, 35 preoperative and 34 postoperative surveys were completed. Patients experienced significant reduction in pain (5.6±4.0 to 0.1±0.4, p<0.001) and pruritus (6.5±3.0 to 0.8±1.5, p<0.001) post-intervention. Significant improvements in all three portions of the SCAR-Q were noted. Appearance improved from 26.5±22.3 to 73.4±23.0 (p<0.001); symptom from 44.0±15.7 to 81.4±16.7 (p<0.001); psychosocial impact from 27.7±30.7 to 82.6±26.3 (p<0.001). Conclusions Patients with keloids experience significant improvement in their symptomatic and psychosocial burden after treatment. Although management modalities are not well established, it is essential that plastic surgeons do not overlook the therapeutic benefits on their patients’ well-being.

Notably, our dataset fails to capture less severe injuries that do not present to the ED; hence, our study may not be able to fully quantify the benefit of helmet use in these sports.This study is also limited by its retrospective nature as well as erroneous reporting that is typical of most large databases studies, 26 especially when considering variations by hospital and encoding. Additionally, TQIP focuses on severe traumas and thus does not capture minor injuries that are managed in the outpatient setting. While this group may not be representative of all sports-related injuries sustained by children, it does highlight injuries that require large resource utilization and have the highest patient health and economic burden. This is the first study to present large-scale, multi-institution data regarding frequency, mechanism, disposition, and associated factors of sports-related injuries in this population. This study highlights that sports-related injuries in the adolescent population frequently include skull fractures, facial fractures, and TBI. It also supports previous findings that facial fractures occur in higher frequencies among adolescent/young adult populations. Further research is needed on the costs and long-term consequences of these sports-related injuries.