ABSTRACT
Following an injury, the skin has a tremendous capacity to heal. When the injury involves the skin, with disruption of the dermis, the repair process entails removal of the damaged tissue and laying down of a new extracellular matrix (ECM) over which epidermal continuity can be reestablished. This process of repair and the subsequent reorganization of the dermal matrix is known as scar formation and maturation. A scar can be identified morphologically by a lack of specific organization of cellular and matrix elements when compared with surrounding uninjured skin. If the process of reorganization of the dermal repair matrix is very efficient, little or no scarring will result; this is demonstrated in fetal wound healing (1-9). The histopathological examination of normal skin and normal, hypertrophic, and keloid scars (Fig. 1) shows that collagen is disorganized in all the scar tissues. Collagen nodules are present in hypertrophic scar tissue and thick hyalinized collagen bundles are present in keloid scar tissues (10-13).
