So I am on the road to recovery after a bad accident. I’ve got my fingers back on…tho they were never completely off. And the scab on both fingers is slowly coming off. The skin on both finger has also sloughed off and it looks like a brand new finger is forming with a scar. My questions are: Do scars form from the bottom upp or the top down? Meaning, is the new skin that is forming going to be uniform or will it remain thin? This is a working hand so I am hoping it will toughen back up like it was…is that true? If so how long does this process usually take?
Both wounds went down into the bone and took pieces out. I had surgery to fix the nerves and now I am putting 32k i.u.'s of vitamin E on it and covering it every night. That actually seems to help quite a bit - but that’s not going to regrow the skin…right?
I’m not sure exactly how detailed you want me to be, but in general, scars heal from the bottom up. Your skin has several layers. If you only cut the top layer (the epidermis) it can make new cells the migrate to heal the cut fairly quickly without much scarring. However, when you get into the deeper layers (the dermis) then the tissue that is there has other structures besides just cells, such as collagen. When the local cells make new collagen, it isn’t laid down in exactly the same fashio as the original collagen and this is what forms a scar. A scar is by nature weaker than the original tissue. The problem is that everybody heals differently. Some people form less collagen and have depressed, thinner scars. Some produce way too much collagen and have raised scars that can get quite large (keloids). If the wound has to heal without being stitched shut then the surface cells may never completely fill in the gap with normal skin. That is why a sutured wound heals better. However, the surface of the skin usually doesn’t heal well until the underlying tissue heals.
In short, then, given a deep wound such as yours, it is very difficult to predict how much scarring there will be and how “normal” the skin will end up. Keep in mind that it can take up to a year to finish healing. Also, there is no evidence that vitamin E cream does anything.
Thank you! Yes, I read that about the vitamin E. I mostly let it dry during the day and put the vitamin e on it at night and cover it because I don’t want to bang it.
In such a severe wound that you’re describing, even when they heal, they will never be 100% of what they were before. Some of its strength will be lost (this includes tensile strength). Usually the scarred skin is 70% as strong as it was pre-accident. That said, for most of us, and for the majority of work we do, 70% of what it was is plenty, since we never demanded 100% out of it.