What Is Abrasion All about?

An abrasion can be defined as a surface injury or external injury frequently identified as “scratch”. This kind of wounds, injure the primary or the exterior skin only which is also know as the “epidermal layer”.

Nevertheless, abrasions at times do extend into dermal layer as well  spending on the severity of the injury, resulting in slight bleeding.

Such wounds normally happen by a quick impact horizontally or across the skin’s surface, however if the impact’s direction is vertical, resulting in it wounding down in the skin’s surface it is sometimes as well termed as a “crush” injury.

There are a various medical stages of abrasion. An injury caused because of a contact with carpeting or textiles is medically termed as “carpet burn” or “rug burn”. Damage caused due to a vehicle accident where if the skin comes in contact with the road’s surface it is termed “road rash”.

The skin brushing on ropes is termed as “friction burn”, or a “rope burn”. Although the abrasions are medically termed as burns but they are a less serious type of an injury in comparison to a burn itself. The reason being that in a burn it results in demolishing the proteins which build the epidermal layer, resulting in interruption in the functions of these cells.

There is another kind of abrasion known as the “corneal abrasion” that happens by the scratch or damage caused by a grain of dust or a contact lens scratching the external layer of our eyes.

There are a lot of treatments depending on the kind, place, and severity of abrasion. Antibiotics of the kind of “Bacitracin” or “Neosporin” are recommended to apply for prevention from infection and moistening the wound. A dressing of the wound can be done but is not a mandate. However,
dressing does help in a way by maintaining the wound from drying
–which hinders the healing process.

If the abrasion causes pain, analgesics like “benzocaine”, and “lidocaine” are proper to apply on the surface, for larger abrasions however a more systematic analgesic is recommended.

An ideal example of “brush abrasion” caused by contact with the surface of road is found in “Simpson’s Forensic Medicine, 1997 page 81”.