Help! Pathophisiology of inflammation.

SoldierNurse22, BSN, RN · Nov 25, 2015

Above are a few reliable sources that have more detailed information about the inflammatory process as it pertains to physical injury.

Think about it this way: your immune system is responsible for total wellness of the body. Therefore, the same system that responds to and mitigates the threat of pathogenic invaders also responds to internal damage resulting from physical injury. If you look at it on a broader scale, while the cause of damage may be different in an infection versus an injury, the result is often the same: the disruption of tissue and cellular damage requiring clean up and repair.

What happens when you get an infection? There is often cellular damage and a need for repair due to an external force (a pathogen). What happens when you've received a physical injury such as a sprain? While there may not be any pathogen, there is still a need for repair to tissues, which occurs via the same process. Even in a process that involves an injury that occurs under (ideally) sterile conditions such as a surgery, the body experiences inflammation at the site of the surgery in order to properly heal.

Inflammation can be a result of infection, but in a healthy person, it is a symptom of the body attempting to heal itself--it's a sign of an active immune system.

Vani1925 · Nov 25, 2015

Thank you, thank you, thank you! You rock! That makes absolutely total sense. Now I can finally understand. Sometimes it takes me a long time to really get something, but when I get it it's like a ray of light shinning on me, LOL! Now when I have a patient with inflammation I'll be able to understand the pathophysiology behind it. Again thanks a million. God bless!

Tissue injury and inflammation
Inflammation: The Leukocyte Adhesion Cascade
The inflammatory response to skeletal muscle injury: illuminating complexities. - PubMed - NCBI
The immune response to trauma. - PubMed - NCBI
Above are a few reliable sources that have more detailed information about the inflammatory process as it pertains to physical injury.
Think about it this way: your immune system is responsible for total wellness of the body. Therefore, the same system that responds to and mitigates the threat of pathogenic invaders also responds to internal damage resulting from physical injury. If you look at it on a broader scale, while the cause of damage may be different in an infection versus an injury, the result is often the same: the disruption of tissue and cellular damage requiring clean up and repair.
What happens when you get an infection? There is often cellular damage and a need for repair due to an external force (a pathogen). What happens when you've received a physical injury such as a sprain? While there may not be any pathogen, there is still a need for repair to tissues, which occurs via the same process. Even in a process that involves an injury that occurs under (ideally) sterile conditions such as a surgery, the body experiences inflammation at the site of the surgery in order to properly heal.
Inflammation can be a result of infection, but in a healthy person, it is a symptom of the body attempting to heal itself--it's a sign of an active immune system.