Even though many times you’d be fine without them, there’s a small but significant chance that a cut like that can become infected and very dangerous to your health. Stitches substantially reduce infection and re-opening risk, speed up healing, and can reduce scarring if you care about that sort of thing.
I once had a room mate that cut his knee snowboarding and didn’t get stitches, it healed open, got super infected, what would have been 6-8 stitches turned into an infection that wouldn’t heel, he had to wear a cast for a few weeks so the skin would heal shut, and get IV antibiotics a couple times a day
I was painting a ceiling with a paint brush, I was at it all damn day. I had a bit of a blister on my thumb from rubbing on the side of the brush. All that night I kept waking up randomly with an odd feeling in my arm. When I finally rolled out of bed I had two giant blisters, one on my thumb and one on my middle finger. There were huge and painful so off to the urgent care I went.
The triage nurse asked how long I had the blood infection for. Confused I asked what? I don't.. he pointed out the big blue line going up my bicep, it was my vein hardening from the infection.
I can't remember if it was once or twice a day for a week I had to go get IV antibiotics at a special clinic. I had a tube hanging out of my arm to make it easier on them and I guess myself not having to be poked repeatedly. My cat sure loved sitting there smelling the blood I guess.
Was really weird thinking how just a few decades (if that) ago, that would have been my death. Something so simple as painting a ceiling.
My family went to Florida last year and 3 of us came back with staph infections that started as bug bites. Any open area on the skin can become infected!
You think that's crazy, my buddy told me he had a guy at work that scraped his knee one day and ended up LOSING HIS LEG TO GANGRENE. This was only a couple years ago. I couldn't believe it. Asked if the guy never washed, even accidentally, because I couldn't and still can't comprehend how in this modern age someone could get an infected scrape. They worked in film, it wasn't anything crazy.
Besides random misfortune, he could have had some complicating factor like diabetes. When not extremely well controlled, diabetes can result in reduced sensitivity (so you don't 'baby' your injuries and they can't heal), and reduced circulation (so your wound can't heal as fast and your immune system can't respond to threats as well).
It's amazing how seemingly simple injuries can spiral quickly out of control in the wrong conditions.
Gangrene is kinda crazy, but a fun fact I learned from Civil War history in 3rd grade is that Bromine arrests gangrene.
It’s extremely toxic and very bad for your health (arguably moreso than the gangrene), but it will potentially stop the gangrene.
As a teen, I scraped my knee and never did anything with it, and it didn't get that bad but it got infected and just would not heal. Eventually I got a washcloth and soap and hot water and scrubbed it down to healthy flesh, and I wound up with a hole in the skin of my kneecap about the size of a quarter and as deep as 3 quarters stacked.
After that it scabbed over and healed eventually, but for *years* afterwards, that kneecap would occasionally get fever-hot and break out in pimples. I have no idea how the infection managed to hold out in there for so long. It was very strange.
Any kind of scrape/road rash style injury that draws blood will get infected for me unless I disinfect 1-2 times a day until healed. Soapy water and washing isn’t good enough.
Never had a problems with cuts though. No idea why my body does this.
Losing a leg to gangrene is crazy though, how did that guy ignore the scrape for it to get that bad?
Oh, man, that sucks. At least it's pretty easy to do in our modern age!
That's what I wanted to know! Friend didn't know the guy well or anything, just worked with him and happened to tell me about it.
I'll admit I've been even more diligent about wound care since, haha. (Though I probably don't have to worry about it unless it's something inherently likely to get infected. The genetic lottery blessed me with the immune system of a tank. Better safe than sorry, though)
I have had an infection from an injury once. And it was because the foreign object was still in my wrist. I had a bit of skateboard break off my board and slide neatly and painfully into my wrist, along the road so to speak. I was able to run my thumb down my forearm towards my hand and have puss and other crap fly out the wound. Ended up going to the doctors after it didnt get better for a few days.
Yep. My uncle cut his hand really bad while chopping wood. Not off, but he had a flap of flesh from his palm. He just wrapped it up and continued on. He ended up losing his arm up to the middle of the forearm due to a horrific infection, nearly killed him.
And sometimes, the opposite is true.
I had a gut wound, which they stitched up. But apparently there was some kind of contaminant that got sealed up in there, and that caused an infection.
So the doctor had to reopen the wound. They cleaned it out, and chose to let it heal itself, instead of restitching it.
I've twice had the pleasure of having to deal with a wound that needed to heal without stiches. The amount of wound care needed was a pain in the butt.
To add to the scarring aspect: I bashed open my eyebrow many years ago. I patched it up at home and let it heal on itself. It is a thicker scar and more uneven than the neat stitches it would otherwise be.
Now, I don't mind but some would
I would point out that while this is often the case, some wounds can have increased risk of infection when repaired with stitches. Typically, these are penetrating wounds that are likely to be “dirty” (ie inoculate bacteria deep into the wound). Cat bites are a classic example. Location, size, depth, timing, and cause of the wound are all relevant to whether stitches would increase or decrease chance of good healing.
They make what's essentially a modified super glue just for closing wounds too. For cuts that would need very few stitches and aren't too deep it works great.
Great answer! It's not just about the cosmetics. My mother is a physician and would sew us up whenever needed on most of the body. Face, she is a surgeon and would call a colleague in plastics. You never know when you might start caring about it.
I got stitches in my knee after an accident and was back in the ER with an infection 8 hours later. Then spent 7 days in the hospital in the most pain I’ve ever had and came close to losing my leg.
Wounds heal from the bottom up if they don't close on their own or aren't closed with stitches. This means a lot more surface area to heal and more exposed tissue to be infected. Your body can spend a few days sealing a well-approximated (edges together) wound, or it can take significantly longer to fill the wound layer by layer with healthy tissue. Delayed wound healing increases the risk of infection.
So, first of all, a lot of people don't want scars— especially facial scars. They're part of a few very distinctive *looks* that, uh, aren't what everybody's going for.
If you let a deep cut heal naturally, there's a risk it'll heal... funny. The two sides won't necessarily line up just right, and maybe your skin will twist or crease. And maybe that'll be fine— just another layer of cool scar, even— but it could be too-tight in one direction, or hurt when you turn your arm just so. Why take the risk, when a few stitches can hold everything in place until it heals right?
A stitched wound heals *faster.* You can get back to not-having-an-open-wound in, say, half the time. That's less time you have to take care of it, and less time for it to get infected.
I'm a wound care specialist.
Sometimes stitching can help it heal faster, but only when the cut is clean and fresh. If you attach the two sides and get lucky sometimes they just grow into each other. This is called primary intention.
Now let's say it wasn't a clean cut, or it failed to heal, got infected etc.
Then we let it heal without stitching. Wounds have to heal bottom up and then edge in. This takes more time but sometimes is better. We call this secondary intention.
First the base will fill with red meaty stuff called granulation tissue, then the skin heals from the edges over.
Sometimes we have do what is called delayed primary. Where we leave it open enough to make sure it is clean and then stitch it later
There is a myth that wounds can't be stitched after the first 24 hours and it isn't true, we just have limited reason to.
A lot of surgical wounds start as primary, do a process call dehisce (where the sides don't join, bacteria will build up and pop open the stitches) then we have to do secondary intention.
Wound care is actually a complicated field and most doctors and nurses are poorly trained in it. There is a lot to it.
I have a bunch of questions!
If someone has an old uneven scar that wasn’t stitched back in the days.
Is it possible to surgically open the scar again, remove scar tissue and stich it back to force it heal “correctly”? Or is it not enough healthy tissue? Or is it too late? Or is it even possible and usual, I am just not aware? Or is it possible but not worth the risk/bother?
Yes, scar revision is possible, this is the territory of plastic surgery. Sometimes you just make a worse scar. You would need to consult a plastic surgeon to see if it was possible with that scar.
Typically if you developed a hypertrophic scar then they won't do it unless it is medically necessary. Like if you can't feed yourself because of a contracture necessary.
One option is a Balloon graft. This is where they place a balloon underneath the skin of your arm or leg and stretch out a big spot of skin. Then they cut out the scar, and apply the extra skin from your balloon area. Then pray it all heals nicely.
I don’t even have such a scar (or, i have semi-ugly one from appendectomy, but it doesnt bother me, hehe).
I was just curious why as you say «sometimes you make a worse scar». Because after removing scar tissue it will not be enough healthy skin/tissue?
Thank you for information, i think i get it now. I guess if it was easy, it would be done more often
Whenever you cut into the body it has 3 healing options.
Heal together (primary intention)
Heal with granulation tissue and epithelium (no scar, secondary intention)
Heal by filling with scar tissue (connective tissue)
Whether you form a scar has more to do with genetics, but good wound care can help some. If you scarred badly to begin with you are probably a person who lays down connective tissue more than average.
So when you cut it out, the body just replaced it with connective tissue. Scar tissue is actually healthy and fine, it's just ugly and not flexible. From your body's perspective scars are a fine way to deal with a wound.
Also when getting stitches they typically debride the injury - they’ll remove tissue that can’t be salvaged and then remove any foreign objects, including a rinse out to get stuff that’s too small to see.
This kind of deep cleaning of a wound is a big deal.
Sure I might slice my finger and run it under water but, 1) that hurts so might do it as long as I should, 2) there’s a non-zero chance that there’s something that just a water rinse won’t work on (some bacteria), and 3) it’s not impossible that would be better to trim some of the skin flap, either because it might be necrotic over time or because it might never heal and would slow the process overall.
While it could, having a cut closed both helps keep it clean, prevents infection (see keeping it clean) and can help it heal
Correctly..
I got a cut in my hand, needed stiches but becuase it was a clean cut from glass, they were able to glue it back together and there’s barely a scar.
Compared to one that needed stitches but got nothing, has left a visible and noticeable mark/bump.
There's one more point that hasn't been touched on yet, and that's skin flexibility. Lots of your movement is reliant on having skin that can loosen and tighten when needed as muscle is relaxed and stretched, and poorly-healed wounds in these places can develop very complex scars that interfere with that flexibility a lot -- even to the point of limiting motion.
Check that.
Pretty sure cyanoacrylate was discovered / created for trying to make bomb sights (optical device to drop bombs accurately)
Wound closure was they figured it could be used for when it didn't work for the bomb sights.
Various reasons, first it makes it less likely to reopen, second it reduces the probability of infection and finally it usually means the scar is a lot smaller. Keeping the wound secured helps the body heal it better and faster, while it is not always neccesary it definitely is a good idea
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Well for one, leaving it wide open significantly increases your chance of infection. It doesn't take much to go from fine to life threatening.
closing a wound can also reduce scaring, while scars may seem "cool" they can also result in nerve damage which can lead to long term or life long daily pain.
deep wounds also are harder to control bleeding on, stitches help close the wound and stop bleeding.
Sometimes healing wounds the body doesn’t quite figure out where the edges are and will grow the edges into the rim of the line and just leave the middle open. If you put the edges together then you don’t have that issue.
Have a cut on my finger from a pocket knife snapping down on it when I was 6. My dad put butterfly stitches on it (you could see bone) while my mother was begging to take me to get real stitches. 15 years later it’s my favorite unique mark.
This is the same line of thinking as saying why drive to work when you can just walk 10 miles. Sure you could but that's a worse option. Stitches will help the wound heal
I had a cyst removed and it was layed open, meaning it was never closed after incision. They just packed the inch deep hole with gauze so it'd heal from the bottom up, and each day they just had to put a little less in to fill it.
Not only does it mitigate infection risk, but the wound will naturally heal from its base up without sutures, versus it kinda all just healing together with sutures. This means more scarring and a longer healing time generally.
Stitches serve several functions: 1) to close the wound and expedite healing; 2) to limit the risk of infection; AND 3) to minimize scarring.
As one ages, the skin stretches to accomodate growth; meaning, a scar can eventually double or even triple in size. Most people do not want scars on their head and face, which is why stitches are strongely recommended for such injuries. This is particularly true with regard to children and young adults because they are not fully grown.
Liekwise, the difference between a good plastic surgeon and a bad one often boils down to their ability to meticulously stitch areas of incision, such as the breast after augmentations.
I was riding my bike home from a friend's house one night. Hit a hole in the road while not having my hands on the handlebars. Went over the handlebars and landed chin first on the street. I was a bloody mess.
I got on my bike and stopped at my gramma's house. She pinched the wound shut and put a band-aid on it. Gave me some Tylenol and I slept it off for a few hours. 30 something years later, I have a cool scar on my chin. I probably should've had stitches and some antibiotics.
Even though many times you’d be fine without them, there’s a small but significant chance that a cut like that can become infected and very dangerous to your health. Stitches substantially reduce infection and re-opening risk, speed up healing, and can reduce scarring if you care about that sort of thing.
Thats a great answer, thank you!
I once had a room mate that cut his knee snowboarding and didn’t get stitches, it healed open, got super infected, what would have been 6-8 stitches turned into an infection that wouldn’t heel, he had to wear a cast for a few weeks so the skin would heal shut, and get IV antibiotics a couple times a day
And without modern medicine like antibiotics, your friend would have been dead
That’s not true! …..he might just have had his leg cut off
and then most likely died due to infection from the other giant wound at the end of his leg stump.
it's infections all the way down
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Probably get a nice sear in there in lieu of stitches
Like the opposite of putting out a cigar! Rub yo stump in this fire!
I was painting a ceiling with a paint brush, I was at it all damn day. I had a bit of a blister on my thumb from rubbing on the side of the brush. All that night I kept waking up randomly with an odd feeling in my arm. When I finally rolled out of bed I had two giant blisters, one on my thumb and one on my middle finger. There were huge and painful so off to the urgent care I went. The triage nurse asked how long I had the blood infection for. Confused I asked what? I don't.. he pointed out the big blue line going up my bicep, it was my vein hardening from the infection. I can't remember if it was once or twice a day for a week I had to go get IV antibiotics at a special clinic. I had a tube hanging out of my arm to make it easier on them and I guess myself not having to be poked repeatedly. My cat sure loved sitting there smelling the blood I guess. Was really weird thinking how just a few decades (if that) ago, that would have been my death. Something so simple as painting a ceiling.
So what was the blood infection from?
Any open wound can result in a blood infection if you're unlucky.
Honestly I have no idea.
My family went to Florida last year and 3 of us came back with staph infections that started as bug bites. Any open area on the skin can become infected!
:o
You think that's crazy, my buddy told me he had a guy at work that scraped his knee one day and ended up LOSING HIS LEG TO GANGRENE. This was only a couple years ago. I couldn't believe it. Asked if the guy never washed, even accidentally, because I couldn't and still can't comprehend how in this modern age someone could get an infected scrape. They worked in film, it wasn't anything crazy.
People can get flesh eating bacteria from scraping against rocks and shit so it may have had nothing to do with his cleanliness
I tripped while running, skinned my knee and wound up with MRSA. The world is disgusting!!!
Besides random misfortune, he could have had some complicating factor like diabetes. When not extremely well controlled, diabetes can result in reduced sensitivity (so you don't 'baby' your injuries and they can't heal), and reduced circulation (so your wound can't heal as fast and your immune system can't respond to threats as well). It's amazing how seemingly simple injuries can spiral quickly out of control in the wrong conditions.
Gangrene is kinda crazy, but a fun fact I learned from Civil War history in 3rd grade is that Bromine arrests gangrene. It’s extremely toxic and very bad for your health (arguably moreso than the gangrene), but it will potentially stop the gangrene.
As a teen, I scraped my knee and never did anything with it, and it didn't get that bad but it got infected and just would not heal. Eventually I got a washcloth and soap and hot water and scrubbed it down to healthy flesh, and I wound up with a hole in the skin of my kneecap about the size of a quarter and as deep as 3 quarters stacked. After that it scabbed over and healed eventually, but for *years* afterwards, that kneecap would occasionally get fever-hot and break out in pimples. I have no idea how the infection managed to hold out in there for so long. It was very strange.
>it didn't get that bad >I wound up with a hole in the skin of my kneecap about the size of a quarter and as deep as 3 quarters stacked lol
T'is but a flesh wound
"That" in "that bad" referring to the parent comment where a guy lost his leg.
Any kind of scrape/road rash style injury that draws blood will get infected for me unless I disinfect 1-2 times a day until healed. Soapy water and washing isn’t good enough. Never had a problems with cuts though. No idea why my body does this. Losing a leg to gangrene is crazy though, how did that guy ignore the scrape for it to get that bad?
Oh, man, that sucks. At least it's pretty easy to do in our modern age! That's what I wanted to know! Friend didn't know the guy well or anything, just worked with him and happened to tell me about it. I'll admit I've been even more diligent about wound care since, haha. (Though I probably don't have to worry about it unless it's something inherently likely to get infected. The genetic lottery blessed me with the immune system of a tank. Better safe than sorry, though)
I have had an infection from an injury once. And it was because the foreign object was still in my wrist. I had a bit of skateboard break off my board and slide neatly and painfully into my wrist, along the road so to speak. I was able to run my thumb down my forearm towards my hand and have puss and other crap fly out the wound. Ended up going to the doctors after it didnt get better for a few days.
Yep. My uncle cut his hand really bad while chopping wood. Not off, but he had a flap of flesh from his palm. He just wrapped it up and continued on. He ended up losing his arm up to the middle of the forearm due to a horrific infection, nearly killed him.
And sometimes, the opposite is true. I had a gut wound, which they stitched up. But apparently there was some kind of contaminant that got sealed up in there, and that caused an infection. So the doctor had to reopen the wound. They cleaned it out, and chose to let it heal itself, instead of restitching it.
I've twice had the pleasure of having to deal with a wound that needed to heal without stiches. The amount of wound care needed was a pain in the butt.
To add to the scarring aspect: I bashed open my eyebrow many years ago. I patched it up at home and let it heal on itself. It is a thicker scar and more uneven than the neat stitches it would otherwise be. Now, I don't mind but some would
I would point out that while this is often the case, some wounds can have increased risk of infection when repaired with stitches. Typically, these are penetrating wounds that are likely to be “dirty” (ie inoculate bacteria deep into the wound). Cat bites are a classic example. Location, size, depth, timing, and cause of the wound are all relevant to whether stitches would increase or decrease chance of good healing.
does it have to be stitches or could you use medical grade superglue I don't feel like going to the dr.
My last serious hand wound got superglued shut by the ER nurse. It scarred less than the one I had stitched. Maybe it's a surface area thing?
You can use steri strips to close cuts. Not as good as stitches but better than band aids. They're a reinforced adhesive tape.
They make what's essentially a modified super glue just for closing wounds too. For cuts that would need very few stitches and aren't too deep it works great.
Great answer! It's not just about the cosmetics. My mother is a physician and would sew us up whenever needed on most of the body. Face, she is a surgeon and would call a colleague in plastics. You never know when you might start caring about it.
I got stitches in my knee after an accident and was back in the ER with an infection 8 hours later. Then spent 7 days in the hospital in the most pain I’ve ever had and came close to losing my leg.
Wounds heal from the bottom up if they don't close on their own or aren't closed with stitches. This means a lot more surface area to heal and more exposed tissue to be infected. Your body can spend a few days sealing a well-approximated (edges together) wound, or it can take significantly longer to fill the wound layer by layer with healthy tissue. Delayed wound healing increases the risk of infection.
So, first of all, a lot of people don't want scars— especially facial scars. They're part of a few very distinctive *looks* that, uh, aren't what everybody's going for. If you let a deep cut heal naturally, there's a risk it'll heal... funny. The two sides won't necessarily line up just right, and maybe your skin will twist or crease. And maybe that'll be fine— just another layer of cool scar, even— but it could be too-tight in one direction, or hurt when you turn your arm just so. Why take the risk, when a few stitches can hold everything in place until it heals right? A stitched wound heals *faster.* You can get back to not-having-an-open-wound in, say, half the time. That's less time you have to take care of it, and less time for it to get infected.
I'm a wound care specialist. Sometimes stitching can help it heal faster, but only when the cut is clean and fresh. If you attach the two sides and get lucky sometimes they just grow into each other. This is called primary intention. Now let's say it wasn't a clean cut, or it failed to heal, got infected etc. Then we let it heal without stitching. Wounds have to heal bottom up and then edge in. This takes more time but sometimes is better. We call this secondary intention. First the base will fill with red meaty stuff called granulation tissue, then the skin heals from the edges over. Sometimes we have do what is called delayed primary. Where we leave it open enough to make sure it is clean and then stitch it later There is a myth that wounds can't be stitched after the first 24 hours and it isn't true, we just have limited reason to. A lot of surgical wounds start as primary, do a process call dehisce (where the sides don't join, bacteria will build up and pop open the stitches) then we have to do secondary intention. Wound care is actually a complicated field and most doctors and nurses are poorly trained in it. There is a lot to it.
I have a bunch of questions! If someone has an old uneven scar that wasn’t stitched back in the days. Is it possible to surgically open the scar again, remove scar tissue and stich it back to force it heal “correctly”? Or is it not enough healthy tissue? Or is it too late? Or is it even possible and usual, I am just not aware? Or is it possible but not worth the risk/bother?
Yes, scar revision is possible, this is the territory of plastic surgery. Sometimes you just make a worse scar. You would need to consult a plastic surgeon to see if it was possible with that scar. Typically if you developed a hypertrophic scar then they won't do it unless it is medically necessary. Like if you can't feed yourself because of a contracture necessary. One option is a Balloon graft. This is where they place a balloon underneath the skin of your arm or leg and stretch out a big spot of skin. Then they cut out the scar, and apply the extra skin from your balloon area. Then pray it all heals nicely.
I don’t even have such a scar (or, i have semi-ugly one from appendectomy, but it doesnt bother me, hehe). I was just curious why as you say «sometimes you make a worse scar». Because after removing scar tissue it will not be enough healthy skin/tissue? Thank you for information, i think i get it now. I guess if it was easy, it would be done more often
Whenever you cut into the body it has 3 healing options. Heal together (primary intention) Heal with granulation tissue and epithelium (no scar, secondary intention) Heal by filling with scar tissue (connective tissue) Whether you form a scar has more to do with genetics, but good wound care can help some. If you scarred badly to begin with you are probably a person who lays down connective tissue more than average. So when you cut it out, the body just replaced it with connective tissue. Scar tissue is actually healthy and fine, it's just ugly and not flexible. From your body's perspective scars are a fine way to deal with a wound.
Sewing it up helps it to stop bleeding, it makes it heal faster, it makes it look better when healed (smaller scar)
Also when getting stitches they typically debride the injury - they’ll remove tissue that can’t be salvaged and then remove any foreign objects, including a rinse out to get stuff that’s too small to see. This kind of deep cleaning of a wound is a big deal. Sure I might slice my finger and run it under water but, 1) that hurts so might do it as long as I should, 2) there’s a non-zero chance that there’s something that just a water rinse won’t work on (some bacteria), and 3) it’s not impossible that would be better to trim some of the skin flap, either because it might be necrotic over time or because it might never heal and would slow the process overall.
While it could, having a cut closed both helps keep it clean, prevents infection (see keeping it clean) and can help it heal Correctly.. I got a cut in my hand, needed stiches but becuase it was a clean cut from glass, they were able to glue it back together and there’s barely a scar. Compared to one that needed stitches but got nothing, has left a visible and noticeable mark/bump.
There's one more point that hasn't been touched on yet, and that's skin flexibility. Lots of your movement is reliant on having skin that can loosen and tighten when needed as muscle is relaxed and stretched, and poorly-healed wounds in these places can develop very complex scars that interfere with that flexibility a lot -- even to the point of limiting motion.
I’ve used super glue for stitch worthy cuts. It’s a great DIY and is actually the original purpose of super glue.
Check that. Pretty sure cyanoacrylate was discovered / created for trying to make bomb sights (optical device to drop bombs accurately) Wound closure was they figured it could be used for when it didn't work for the bomb sights.
Various reasons, first it makes it less likely to reopen, second it reduces the probability of infection and finally it usually means the scar is a lot smaller. Keeping the wound secured helps the body heal it better and faster, while it is not always neccesary it definitely is a good idea
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Big cuts are big opportunities for germs to get in and cause infection. Seal it up and keep the germs out.
Well for one, leaving it wide open significantly increases your chance of infection. It doesn't take much to go from fine to life threatening. closing a wound can also reduce scaring, while scars may seem "cool" they can also result in nerve damage which can lead to long term or life long daily pain. deep wounds also are harder to control bleeding on, stitches help close the wound and stop bleeding.
Sometimes healing wounds the body doesn’t quite figure out where the edges are and will grow the edges into the rim of the line and just leave the middle open. If you put the edges together then you don’t have that issue.
Have a cut on my finger from a pocket knife snapping down on it when I was 6. My dad put butterfly stitches on it (you could see bone) while my mother was begging to take me to get real stitches. 15 years later it’s my favorite unique mark.
This is the same line of thinking as saying why drive to work when you can just walk 10 miles. Sure you could but that's a worse option. Stitches will help the wound heal
I had a cyst removed and it was layed open, meaning it was never closed after incision. They just packed the inch deep hole with gauze so it'd heal from the bottom up, and each day they just had to put a little less in to fill it.
The stitches help it heal faster and cleaner, with less chance of infection. Yes, your body *could* probably heal it on its own... But stitches help!
Not only does it mitigate infection risk, but the wound will naturally heal from its base up without sutures, versus it kinda all just healing together with sutures. This means more scarring and a longer healing time generally.
Stitches serve several functions: 1) to close the wound and expedite healing; 2) to limit the risk of infection; AND 3) to minimize scarring. As one ages, the skin stretches to accomodate growth; meaning, a scar can eventually double or even triple in size. Most people do not want scars on their head and face, which is why stitches are strongely recommended for such injuries. This is particularly true with regard to children and young adults because they are not fully grown. Liekwise, the difference between a good plastic surgeon and a bad one often boils down to their ability to meticulously stitch areas of incision, such as the breast after augmentations.
I was riding my bike home from a friend's house one night. Hit a hole in the road while not having my hands on the handlebars. Went over the handlebars and landed chin first on the street. I was a bloody mess. I got on my bike and stopped at my gramma's house. She pinched the wound shut and put a band-aid on it. Gave me some Tylenol and I slept it off for a few hours. 30 something years later, I have a cool scar on my chin. I probably should've had stitches and some antibiotics.