Consistency of fingerprint after an injury
If the skin is completely abraised or otherwise removed, will the renewed skin have the same fingerprint?
About 8 years back, I was running an obstacle course and one of the obstacles was to climb up a vertical rope, reach the top and come back down. I climbed up no problem but I didn't know how to come down, so I slid down the rope at the expense of friction to break the velocity. The rope was made of jute. This resulted in the skin from my finger tips and parts of my palms to completely tear away. The tears were deep enough to reveal muscle.
It took about a month or two for the skin to completely come back. My question is, when such an injury occurs, is it plausible to assume that my fingerprints now are the same as they were before the injury? If yes, what mechanism goes into ensuring this?
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The skin has 2 layers: epidermis (the outer) and dermis (the inner). Sliding down the rope may cause an abrasion in which only the epidermis is damaged. Scars develop only when the dermis is damaged.
Fingerprints (Britannica):
Each ridge of the epidermis (outer skin) is dotted with sweat pores
for its entire length and is anchored to the dermis (inner skin) by a
double row of peglike protuberances, or papillae. Injuries such as
superficial burns, abrasions, or cuts do not affect the ridge
structure or alter the dermal papillae, and the original pattern is
duplicated in any new skin that grows. An injury that destroys the
dermal papillae, however, will permanently obliterate the ridges.
So, the fingerprints after an injury that has left no scars will be likely the same as before, because the dermis has not been damaged. To prove this, one can ask "the officials" to take his/her fingerprints again...
Some chemotherapeutics can cause "hand-foot syndrome" with peeling of the epidermal layer of the skin and loss of fingerprints (Jama Oncology):
Within 8 weeks of treatment, severe quality loss of fingerprints was
noticed in 9 patients treated with capecitabine and in 1 patient
treated with the TKI sunitinib.
Severe fingerprint quality loss recovered completely within 2 to 4
weeks after treatment discontinuation in all 3 patients who were able
to provide posttreatment fingerprints
The article does not specifically say if the restored fingerprints were the same as before, though.
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