Leg laceration (cut in the skin)

Skin | Emergency Medicine | Leg laceration (cut in the skin) (Disease)


Description

The symptoms of a laceration include pain, bleeding, swelling, and bruising to the skin. Worsening redness, swelling, and tenderness around a laceration are signs of a skin infection, called cellulitis.

The term laceration implies a torn or jagged wound. The term gash can be used for more dramatic effect because it implies a longer or deeper cut. An avulsion refers to a wound where tissue is not just separated but torn away from the body.

Causes and Risk factors

A person with a laceration has a cut, or tear, in the skin, caused by an injury. Lacerations may also involve structures that lie beneath the skin, such as muscles, tendons, blood vessels, and nerves. When the doctor evaluates a leg laceration, it will be important to determine if the laceration penetrates a joint.

Lacerations tend to be caused by blunt trauma (such as a blow, fall, or collision). Cuts and lacerations are terms for the same condition.

Diagnosis and Treatment

Depending on the type of disease, the surgeon may recommend various types of interventions. These include: - Skin grafts: Use common in burned wound, consists in taking a fragment of a skin on the body and move it to the wound burned. Skin grafts are used for procedures of the breasts or nose reshaping. - Microsurgery: it consists in suturing of vessels or nerves to reattach thin portions detached from the finger, ear or lip. - Skin transplants: portions of muscle, skin or bone are transferred from one side to another. This procedure is used to reshape the breast and head and neck surgery. - Tissue expansion: This procedure stimulates the body to produce excess skin that will be used to reshape the breasts, scalp repair or other procedures. The procedure consists of inserting a balloon under the skin, causing skin stretch growth, similar to skin expansion in pregnant women. A cut refers to a skin wound with separation of the connective tissue elements. Unlike an abrasion (a wound caused by friction or scraping), none of the skin is missing the skin is just separated. A cut is typically thought of as a wound caused by a sharp object (such as a knife or a shard of glass).

After you suffer a cut you often bleed. Other concerns with a cut include infection, pain, damage to structures beneath the skin, and future scars. Although it can be obscured by blood, a cut is one of the easiest medical conditions to diagnose. A deep cut, may reveal underlying tissues such as fat, tendon, muscle, or bone.

Some people faint at the sight of their own blood (this is a neurological reaction in which a reflex slowing of the heart causes a low blood pressure called vasovagal syncope). Physicians need to distinguish this common faint from people who pass out from loss of blood (hemorrhagic shock). ...