CLPEX Chat Board

Good Morning,

I’m attaching 4 images that were sent to me (THANK YOU for sharing!). All the images are of the same finger (rolled and flats from 2018 and 2020); they are not before and after. I thought I’d attach them all in case people would like to see additional images with different amounts of pressure. The pressure makes one part of the scar look like a crease in some images.

I’m wondering, does anyone have any ideas on how the injury (scar) resulted in the extra whorl? It’s interesting that the whorl to the left appears to be finer ridges close together, and the whorl to the right appears to have thicker ridges spaced further apart (not only in the injured area but all over).

I’d love to hear your thoughts. I sent this to a bunch of people by email as well.

And here are the 2020 images.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Well, my first thought was OUCH!!!

Maybe Alice can instruct us in the attachment of the epidermis to the underlying tissue in scar tissue, and why it might sometimes more closely resemble a skin wrinkle than an overt scar.

That type of scar is most likely due to a loss of support structures like fat/muscle that couldn't be replaced during the healing process. What could be repaired flowed in to fill what looks like would have been a pretty significant gap in the skin. I think the appearance of the whorl on the right is just coincidental to the healing process and loss of some underlying support.

I used to create artificial scars in vitro all the time. It's pretty cool to see how cells move to fill space. Thanks for sharing!

My instinct says this may be a case of skin grafting. If this were an instance where someone received an injury and their own ridges grew back in a slightly different location on the finger (in this case off to the side) - I would expect to see the same pattern and same arrangement of minutiae. Almost like a double tap. However, there are clear features in the left whorl that are absent from the right whorl, and visa versa. A regular ol scar may cause added/dropped minutiae a couple of times, but I feel it would be weird to have it cause as MANY differences as are present here.

I think the whorl on the left may be the original pattern on this subject's finger. And at some point they sustained an injury that necessitated skin grafting to heal. The square-like shape in the upper right quadrant (which contains the second whorl) would then be from an entirely different finger.

No idea, but that's my guess Hope Alice weighs in haha.

Brianne B.