It regrows to the exact size it was, no extra skin no less skin. Unless of course it’s a serious injury but I’m talking minor skin removal. Obviously gunshot wounds, flesh eating bacteria and animal bites don’t do this because of scar tissue I assume but even with them it’s remarkable how close it comes to filling in the area. How does the body know when to stop growing the new tissue to fill it in and how come with these deeper wounds the body has a harder time figuring it out?
In: Biology
Seeing a lot of answers here that kind of answer the question. I’m a wound care nurse so my studies include this specific topic.
Typically your skin cells (made up of multiple layers) grow vertically to maintain your intact skin barrier. When you have a wound the body’s reaction to this “breach” is to essentially notify the skin cells surrounding the damaged skin. When the cells get this signal they stop growing vertically and start growing horizontally from the wound edges inward.
When the skin cells meet in the middle (so the wound is no longer open) they re-program themselves to start growing upward again instead of side to side. In doing so, they start to strengthen the skin to return it back to its normal elasticity and protective ability.
Depending on how many layers of skin are affected (how deep the wound is), the body will either be able to make a pretty smooth skin cover with all surrounding tissue structures intact (hair follicles, nerves, etc) or it will rely on scar tissue to do the best it can to get everything closed up. The deeper the wound, the more likely it will heal with scar tissue (which isn’t as strong and uniform as regular skin). When scar tissue is involved, damaged structures within the skin layers can not be preserved or repaired.
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