Wound Healing & Repair Flashcards
What is parenchyma? Give a couple of examples.
Organ specific cells related to the function e.g.
- Parenchyma of the kidney is the epithelial tissue in the renal tubes
- Parenchyma of the heart is the muscle tissue made up of cardiac muscle cells
What is stroma?
‘Background’ tissue that provides structure, mechanical and nutritional support to the organ
What are the 4 types of tissue? What are their functions?
- Epithelia: protection of organs, containment of body fluid, absorption and secretion in skin
- Connective tissue: several cell types and EC products that function in mechanical reinforcement, immune surveillance, diffusion of nutrients and wastes
- Muscle: specialised for gross movement through cellular contraction
- Nervous tissue: rapid-long distance signalling
What characterizes epithelial tissue?
Close cell apposition and presence at a free surface
What is the structure of connective tissue?
It is vascularised and cells are not in close contact but embedded in ECM, its made up of:
- Fibrous components e.g. collagen and elastin
- GAGs to support collagen
- Proteoglycans (GAGs attached to core protein)
What are the 2 types of proper connective tissue?
- Loose: contains numerous cells and loose fibre arrangement in a viscous matrix e.g. haemopoietic/lymphatic tissue
- Dense irregular: dense woven network of collagen and fibres in a viscous matrix e.g. joint capsules, tendons and ligaments
What are the 6 types of specialised connective tissue?
- Loose connective tissue under skin
- Fibrous connective tissue forming a tendon
- Adipose tissue
- Cartilage at end of bone
- Bone
- Blood
What is a wound?
Injury/trauma to tissues disrupting the function and structure of that tissue
What is healing?
The process of returning to health restoring structure and function of injured/diseased tissues
What are the stages of wound healing?
- Haemostasis (<24h): wound closed by clotting/coagulation, platelets and fibrin adhere to sit and thrombus is formed
- Inflammatory (0-4dys): platelets control bleeding, macrophages prevent infection and neutrophils induce inflammation
- Proliferative (1-14dys): angiogenesis, epithelialisation, contraction and fibrous tissue formation
- Remodelling (21dys-yrs): maturation phase where collagen is remodelled and becomes realigned but injured sites tend to be weaker than normal sites
What can happen after an acute tissue injury?
- Injury via infarction, bacterial infections, toxins and trauma
- Acute inflammation via vascular changes, neutrophil recruitment and mediators
- This can go on to:
- Resolution where injurious stimuli is cleared along with mediators and acute inflammatory cells, injured cells are replaced and normal function ensues
- Pus formation (abscess) which can heal
- Healing causes fibrosis and loss of function
- Progression to chronic inflammation
What can happen after a chronic tissue injury?
- Injury via viral infections, chronic infections, persistent injury and autoimmune diseases
- Chronic inflammation via angiogenesis, mononuclear cell infiltrate and fibrosis (scar)
- Healing in the form of fibrosis can cause loss of function
What is tissue repair (healing)?
The restoration of structure and function of damaged tissue via 2 reaction types:
- Regeneration
- Scar formation
What is regeneration?
Healing in which new growth completely restores portions of damaged tissue to their normal state as stable tissues can proliferate when stimulated - ECM plays a major role and it is driven by growth factors e.g. PDGF, VEGF and TGF-β
What are the different types of tissues in terms of their dividing potential?
- Labile: continuously proliferate in order to replace dead or sloughed-off cells e.g. skin, GI and salivary gland tissue
- Stable: cells that normally exist in non-dividing state but can enter cell cycle in response to stimuli such as cell injury e.g. parenchymal cells of liver, kidney and pancreas
- Permanent: non-dividing cells leading to scar formation e.g. cardiac and skeletal
How are growth factors produced in regeneration?
Macrophages and lymphocytes at injury site will produce them as part of inflammatory process OR parenchymal or stromal (connective tissue) cells in response to cell injury so they are produced transiently in response to external stimulus and act by binding to cellular receptors e.g. EGF, TGFα, VEGF and FGF
How do growth factors take part in regeneration?
Stimulate:
- Survival
- Proliferation of particular cells
- Migration
- Differentiation
- Entry of cells into cell cycle
What is the role of extracellular matrix (ECM) in regeneration?
It is the ever-changing background for regeneration and wound healing functioning to store and present GFs as well as acting as a scaffold to which migrating cells adhere