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| Interesting Factors Influencing Wound Healing Process in a Nutshell: Photo by RDNE Stock project: |
Everyone of you may have experience cuts, bruises, scratches
or burns etc. in day to day life.
Especially, if you have children, they tend
to get more and more wounds while they are playing, due to falls etc.
On the
other hand, if left untreated, these wounds can give painful complications too.
So, knowing the factors influencing wound healing may help you get back to
normal driving you another step towards a healthy and happy life!
Two Main Aspects of the Process of Wound Healing
There are two main aspects of wound healing process.
1.
Contraction of the wound
In any wound, the margins approximate and there will be a
mechanical reduction in the size of the wound.
However, depending on the size
of the wound the degree of this contraction may close the defect as in small
wounds and it may simply reduce the size only as in bigger wounds.
2.
Replacement of the lost tissues
The cells in the margins of the wound will proliferate and
migrate. They will try to fill in the gap or the defect wherein replacing the
lost tissues.
There are two ways of achieving this.
When the adjacent
specialized cells have the capacity to proliferate, they will proliferate and
fill in the gap eventually. This is called Regeneration. This is evident in
organs like liver.
The second way is to heal from repair by granulation tissue.
This happens when the adjacent specialized cells do not have the capacity to
proliferate.
So, initially the wound surface will form a granulation tissue and
it will become a scar tissue eventually. This is evident in almost all the skin
wounds.
The red colored surface on a wound is the external
appearance of granulation tissue that you see in skin wounds.
As the wound
ages, this will become white and this is the scar tissue that persists for life
on the skin of affected area.
If the wound is very small, these scars will be
erased with time whereas in bigger wounds, these scars would persist for many
years.
Factors Influencing Wound Healing
There are many factors influencing wound healing.
Firstly,
Local factors are the factors related to the wound area and the surroundings.
Secondly, General factors are the factors that affect all the systems of the
body in general so that they will affect the healing process of your wound too.
Local Factors Influencing Wound Healing
1. The effect of Blood supply
A wound is an active area of the body where cells
proliferate, migrate and differentiate etc.
Thus, these cells need good
nutrition, Oxygen and so forth.
Therefore, the wounds in the tissues with a
good blood supply tend to heal quickly.
Conversely, the wounds in the areas
with poor blood supply may take weeks to months to heal.
Anatomically, some areas of the body like the front of the
lower leg have poor blood supply so the wounds in that area may take some time
to heal.
Likewise, some disease conditions like diabetes, hyperlipidemia,
atherosclerosis, etc. make your blood vessels weak.
Therefore, the blood supply
in general may be affected and mostly, the wounds in the peripheries like
hands, feet may take time to heal.
Most importantly, smoking is another factor
that weaken your blood vessels leading to poor wound healing.
2. Infection and Inflammation
If the wound is infected with bacteria, fungi, etc. the
surrounding tissues will become inflamed.
However, the tissue death due to the
effect of bacteria will be a hindrance to the healing process.
Similarly,
chemical, disinfectants, foreign bodies like dirt also can make irritation of
the wound leading to the inflammation that will cause poor wound healing.
Sometimes, you can damage the delicate wound surface by
rough handling of wound dressing material.
Needless to say, that you need to
elicit extreme care while wound dressing to achieve faster wound healing.
Some scientific evidence shows that when the underlying
tissues of the wounds can attach to other structures like bone.
So that the
contraction of the wound doesn’t occur properly. Obviously, this will delay
healing.
3. The effect of Physical Factors like Movement, the Direction
of the wound and its Location
Research show that when a person is mobile, this will affect
in delayed wound healing when compared to a person kept in rest.
Truly, when a
wound is located on a joint or on a skin crease of a joint, the movement of
that respective joint will negatively affect its healing process. The ultimate
result would be the delayed wound healing.
Another important fact is that when a wound is parallel to
the crease lines of the skin, they tend to heal quickly while the wounds which
are perpendicular to the crease lines will take some time to heal.
4. Drying
When a wound is left open to the environment, it will become
dry.
This will be covered by a hard crust that will lead to a delayed healing.
There should be some moisture for wounds to heal quickly. Applying a dressing
with Vaseline will achieve this.
5. Effects of Radiation
Scientific evidence says that Ultra-violet rays can improve
the wound healing process while X radiation can diminish wound healing by
delaying the formation of granulation tissue.
So, staying in some direct
sunlight may not do any harm. Isn’t it?
General Factors Influencing Wound Healing
1. Age
Wound healing is faster in young population when compared to
old age.
2. Effect of proper Nutrition
As discussed above, wound healing process is a dynamic
process which needs energy.
However, the formation of the granulation tissue
needs proteins in your diet. That is because specific proteins act as
constituents of new granulation tissue.
Thus, if you encounter a protein
deficiency in your diet, wound healing will take a long time.
Likewise, the deficiency of Iron in your diet can
cause poor wound healing.
Iron is important as a main constituent in Hemoglobin
in your Red blood cells. Hemoglobin helps bind oxygen molecules and transport
them to the tissues.
So definitely, poor hemoglobin content will affect poor oxygenation
of wound tissue causing poor wound healing.
Most importantly, this is another
reason why you should take a diet rich in Iron.
Similarly, if your diet is deficient in Vitamin C, that will
cause poor wound healing.
In the lack of Vitamin C, the granulation
tissue is formed but it is abnormal so it will take a long time for your wounds
to heal.
Moreover, research says that adding Zinc to your diet
can increase the rate of wound healing specially, in burns.
This is probably
due to the fact that Zinc is an important constitute of many enzymes.
But there
is some contradictory evidence say that when you take Zinc sulphate as an oral
supplement, there was no significant result.
But moderate increase of Zinc
content in your diet may not harm you when you are suffering from a wound!
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