what happens to a severed finger on a cellular level immediately following amputation?
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Pathologist here:
If you leave the wound open, and assuming the majority of bleeding is stopped somehow, The process of wound healing will begin by “secondary intention”. There are roughly two separate but intertwined processes at work with this. 1. The clotting of blood at the surface will attract fibroblasts (makes collagen/scars) and new vessels, collectively called “granulation tissue” (the soil). This will make a suitable surface for the second process which 2. Involves the slow March of dividing “basal” skin cells from surrounding skin to cover the wound surface ~1 mm a day (the seeds). These basal cells will divide/grow to become your multilayered skin and will also divide to continue filling the gap/wound until closed.
Side note: when getting an open wound checked, the doctor will often say everything looks great, while to the lay-person it’s this stippled red-white-sometimes light yellow weepy gross looking surface. That funny stippled surface is called granulation tissue. The unpigmented border of light colored skin at the edges is the heaped up edges of skin actively dividing to cross/close the gap.
Not included here is information on bone healing, which has its own nuances.
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