Timing of skin wounds

Wound examination is indispensable in forensic practice. It is always necessary to determine wound vitality or wound age to correctly evaluate the relationship between death and any wounds. Thus, the determination of wound vitality or wound age is a classic but still modern theme in forensic pathology. Skin wound healing is a primitive but well orchestrated biological phenomena consisting of three sequential phases, inflammation, proliferation, and maturation. Many biological substances are involved in the process of wound repair, and this short and simplified overview of wound healing can be adopted to determine wound vitality or wound age in forensic medicine. With the development of immunohistochemistry and chemical analyses, the scientific field of wound age determination has advanced progressively during recent years. In particular, it has been demonstrated that collagens, cytokines, and growth factors are useful candidates and markers for the determination of wound vitality or age. In this review article, some interesting and instructive results are presented, contributing to the future practice of every forensic pathologist.