Question

The tensile strength of a healing wound reaches that of unwounded tissue by which time?

• A. 6 weeks
• B. 2 months
• C. 4 months
• D. None

Hint:

A scar plateaus at about 70 to 80 percent of normal skin; it never reaches 100 percent.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is D

Step 1: Wound strength depends on collagen deposition and its remodelling and cross-linking over time. The key teaching point is that a healed wound never fully regains the strength of normal, unwounded skin.

Step 2: The recovery follows a known timeline. When sutures are removed at about the end of the first week, wound strength is only around 10 percent that of unwounded skin. Strength then rises rapidly over the next 4 weeks.

Step 3: The gain slows at about the third month and reaches a plateau at roughly 70 to 80 percent of the tensile strength of unwounded skin. Because it plateaus below 100 percent, none of the fixed time options is correct.

Step 4: Hence 6 weeks, 2 months, and 4 months are all wrong, since at no point does the wound equal native skin strength. The correct answer is None.