A retrospective study on the association of keloids with underlying health conditions in African-American Women

Background: Keloids are disfiguring benign scars that develop due to an exaggerated response to cutaneous wound healing, growing beyond the boundaries of the cutaneous insult into normal, previously uninvolved skin. The association of keloids with other underlying health conditions has been postulated, but not well characterized. Objective: This study aims to identify whether there is any association of keloids with underlying health conditions in African-American women. Methods: This study was done via the use of the National Inpatient Sample, a subset of the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project. African-American women with keloids who had undergone cesarean sections were compared with a control group of African-American women with no history of keloids who had undergone cesarean sections. Results: A total of 301 African-American inpatient encounters with patients with keloids were compared with 37,144 encounters in the control group. The keloid patients had an increased association with peritoneal adhesions compared with the control group. Limitations: results are limited to one race and restricted age range; also, unable to differentiate keloids from hypetrophic scarring with ICD-10 codes. Conclusion: These findings suggest that keloids and peritoneal adhesions may have similar inflammatory processes.