The Healing Process of Adult Skin

Skin healing is a dynamic and highly regulated process of cellular, humoral and molecular mechanisms. This process begins directly after the injury and can last for years. Any tissue disruption of normal anatomical structure can be described as a wound. Skin injuries are defined as open or external wounds. Closed or internal wounds describe organ damage.

Regeneration versus skin repair

Closure of a skin wound can be achieved by regeneration or by repair. While regeneration describes the specific replacement of tissue, primarily for the superficial epidermis, skin repair presents a non-specific form of healing in which the wound heals by fibrosis and scar formation. This last form is unfortunately the main form of wound healing in adult skin. The healing process of skin wounds is often described as an orchestra, whose interaction of cells, growth factors and cytokines results in the closing of the skin. Even when this sensitive balance between cells and mediators is disrupted, the deficiency of one type of cell, or the absence of a mediator, can be compensated by other cells involved in wound healing. So the repair can still take place. The healing process can be split artificially. It has 3 to 5 phases that overlap in time and space.