Dispatch · February 15, 2026 · 6 min · By Ifeoma Stanfield
Laser treatment for keloids: what it can and cannot do
Lasers help with color and symptoms, often alongside other treatments.
Lasers have a role in keloid management, though usually as part of a combination rather than a solo cure. Vascular lasers target the redness and the blood vessels feeding a keloid, reducing color and sometimes itch and improving how the scar looks. Other laser types can soften texture and are often paired with steroid injections, the laser helping the medication penetrate.
What lasers do not reliably do alone is permanently flatten a large keloid; used in isolation they can even provoke regrowth if too aggressive. This is why dermatologists tend to fold laser into a protocol, steroid injection plus vascular laser, for instance, rather than relying on it by itself.
For patients, the realistic expectation is improvement in color, symptoms, and texture as one component of a broader plan, not erasure from a few laser sessions. Matching the laser type to the goal, and combining it sensibly with proven treatments, is what makes it useful.
Related reading: Keloids and skin of color: tailored, careful treatment.