What is a cut?
Cuts are wounds that are mechanically caused by sharp violence of any kind. These include above all so-called occasional wounds, which occur accidentally as a result of accidents or intentionally with damaging intent, but also surgical wounds in the context of medical interventions (e.g. by scalpels). Occasional wounds are always colonized with germs and therefore tend to become inflamed without adequate treatment. Surgical wounds that are made under sterile conditions are usually free of germs and can heal immediately, forming a narrow scar (primary wound healing). In all cases, the skin is cut through at different depths, whereby the edges of the wound are usually smooth and diverge at different distances depending on their severity.
Causes
Cuts always occur when sharp-edged or even pointed objects act mechanically on the skin and cut through it. Therefore, the cause leading to a cut can be manifold. Not only knives of any kind can cause a cut in the skin, but also other sharp-edged objects such as glass (shards of glass), paper edges, razor blades or even pointed objects such as nails or needles can cut through the skin with smooth edges. However, a distinction must be made between whether the object causing the damage is accidentally caused by an “accident” or whether it is intentionally used to cause the damage (by itself or by others).
Diagnosis of a cut
Whether or not a cut is present is usually a mere gaze diagnosis. If an injury has been caused by a sharp or sharp-edged object, a wound develops which has smooth wound edges in almost all cases. Depending on the depth of the incision, the wound edges gape at different distances.
As a rule, incisions also lead to a fairly strong pain stimulus, both at the moment of the injury and afterwards. This is due to the fact that the skin is very sensitive (however, the skin areas are not equally sensitive in all places because they contain different numbers of nerve endings). In addition, cuts often bleed to varying degrees depending on the depth and location of the cut.
