I had a bad skin infection, cause still undetermined (getting my biopsy results back in 2 weeks!) about a year ago. It's left me with some pretty humongous scars around my mouth and cheeks- I suppose you could label them as 'boxcar' scars, but much bigger than what you typically see.

When I finally got to see a dermatologist, she wrote me off as having folliculitis or cystic acne and prescribed me tretinoin. I've been using it religiously since, even though it's had little to no improvement on the condition, since the dermatologist said that if I use it for 2-3 years it will have the same effect on the scarring as laser treatment. The appearance of the scarring really gets me down sometimes, since they are incredibly noticeable flaws and just so... BIG. I know I have to learn to live with it because they're never going to go away completely, but I'm hoping for some way to improve them and make them less noticeable.

Looking online, I get conflicting results on whether or not tretinoin has any effect on depressed scarring. I've been using it for 7 months now at the .1% microgel formula and I think I see some improvement but it's hard to reach a conclusion since they are still very noticeable, even under makeup. Some days moreso than others, it seems. In general, my skin seems brighter and younger and the lesions I get from the condition heal a bit faster than they did prior to tret, so I will continue to use it either way, but I'd feel a little bit better if I knew they would help the scarring over time.

So for long term users of tretinoin with depressed scarring... do you find it's help improve their appearance? Did it make them look flatter, even out their color or improve the texture so they are less noticeable? What's your overall experience?