Scanning electron microscopic study of extraction wound in epithelial repair

Abstract

Extraction wounds of dogs were examined chronologically with a scanning electron microscope in order to clarify the epithelial repair process.
On postextraction day 1, dome-like elevated cells had proliferated in the clot at the residual inner epithelium surface. By day 4, as ascertened by transmission electron microscopy, thin epithelial layers had moved horizontally and were attached over multinucleated leukocytes.
Both the above proliferative patterns were observed until days 21-30, when extraction sockets were closed by newly formed epithelial. Then the newly formed hypertrophic epithelium had turned into stratified squamous epithelium, thereby completing epithelial repair of the extraction socket.