The body's healing process

The Body's Healing Process

From the moment an injury occurs whether it is a broken bone, torn ligament, severe sprain or even a  surgically invasive procedure, your body goes to work to repair the damage.  There a several stages in the healing process the following is a simplification of the various stages:

At the moment of injury: Chemicals are released from the damaged cells which trigger inflammation. Blood vessels at the injury site become dilated; blood flow increases to carry nutrients to the site of tissue damage.

Within hours of injury: White blood cells (leukocytes) travel down the bloodstream to the injury site where they begin to tear down and remove damaged tissue, allowing other specialized cells to start developing scar tissue.

Within days of injury: Scar tissue is formed on the skin or inside the body. The amount of scarring may be proportional to the amount of swelling, inflammation, or bleeding within. In the next few weeks, the damaged area will regain a great deal of strength as scar tissue continues to form.

Within a month of injury: Scar tissue may start to shrink, bringing damaged, torn, or separated tissues back together. However, it may be several months or more before the injury is completely healed.

Bone healing:  Healing of broken bones whether due to a fracture of surgery is the same. There are three basic stages including Inflammation which starts immediately and can last for several days.  This begins with bleeding in the area which clots at the fracture site providing the initial structural stability and blueprint for producing new bone. Second stage is bone production; the clotted blood is replaced with fibrous tissue and cartilage.  This is also referred to as soft callus and is not seen on x-rays, within several weeks this soft callus is replaced by hard bone called hard callus and can be seen on the x-rays. Finally we have bone remodeling, this goes on for several months, bone continues to form and becomes compact and the bone appears similar to its original shape. Weight bearing such as standing or walking encourages bone remodeling.