If you cut a patch of skin down to the dermis on two adjacent fingers, and then tape them such that those wounds are together, will the fingers grow together? FTR, I don’t think it would, but if not, why not?
Probably would. My dad was in a hospital for a motorcycle injury in the 1940’s described an old technique for plastic surgery for a burn victim who was also there. A “sausage” of skin was cut our of his abdomen and rolled into a tube, and while still attached, was connected to a cut on his arm, so it grew into/onto his arm over a few weeks. Then it was cut off his abdomen, his arm was raised to his face, and another six weeks for it to grow onto his cheek(?). Then they cut it away from his arm, and spread it across his face and let it grow on there.
Punchline - apparently they got the sausage disconnected from his abdomen, only to find that he had arthritis and couldn’t get his arm above his chin - so the attached it to his chin and walked the tube up his face, end over end, six weeks per attachment.
Second Punchline - Since my dad was jus getting face scrapes healed, he took his motorcycle to the beach one afternoon and this guy rode along for the trip. After he got back, the nurse gave him heck - didn’t he know why X was in hospital for facial plastic surgery? He’d had an epileptic seizure and fell into a fire. NOt an ideal motorcycle passenger.
By the 1960’s, they had developed the technique of slicing very fine layers of skin and putting them on, rather than cutting deep chunks of skin.
Very interesting, MD. Thanks!
I saw a doco on tv about a young child who had been burnt as a baby, in africa or somewhere impoverished.
Seems that when the child was recovering from burns, the burnt arm was held at at her side… which was also burnt. Result, the scar tissue grew between side and arm , joining it there… The arm had restricted movement because of that stricture.
Same problem occurs when there is an injury to your internals… Can be where the skin binds to muscle, or otherwise intestines, vein, vagina, scrotum, trachea, bronchia, oesophagus… its called a stricture is where the scar tissue binds across wrongly.
I was in the hospital as a teenager and the guy in the next bed was in for surgery to separate scar tissue on his arm from a burn at a very young age. His arm movement had become limited at the elbow because the scar tissue hadn’t grown along with him.
Cracked (first one).
Some kid’s novel about the American Revolution that I recall, the hero was working in a silversmith’s (Revere?) and spilled molten silver on his hand. It was bandaged up and when the bandages were removed, some fingers had fused together.
(“Johnny Tremaine”?)
‘They should call this book “Johnny Deformed”!’
It would for sure. They graft living skin to living skin in some types of breast reconstruction, as well occasionally for producing a new nose or ear.
Pretty much the same as the first item in the aforementioned Cracked article, but specifically for fixing “saddle nose” - a symptom of syphilis - and developed in the 16th century. It involves cutting a piece of skin from the arm but leaving it partially attached, and sewing the whole thing to the face and letting it sit for several months.
The dermis is the skin, but if you filleted open the skin down to the subq tissue and did it in such a way that you left the skin viable, and sewed the fingers skin to skin, you’d end up with two fingers attached with a bridge of scar tissue and skin.
Dogs are a little prone to degloving limb injuries when hit by a car: losing a significant amount of skin. A common treatment is to move a big flap of belly skin to the leg, leaving the tube with the blood vessels until the flap develops a local blood supply. It’s how dogs can end up with nipples on a leg. Which puppies could nurse from.