Necrotic tissue is a condition where living skin dies as a result of blood and oxygen deprivation its cells. Cell deaths occur when the lack of oxygen and blood causes the cells to be acidic, causing them to release an enzyme that starts to break down their own insides. Due to this, the major parts of the cell malfunction and damage other parts, while causing the other parts to become inactive, and this chaos punches a hole in the cell membrane. In the end of this pandemonium, the cell walls expand due to the external fluid, and the cell ultimately explodes.
Necrotic tissue is caused by necrosis of the skin, which in turn is caused by the death of many cells in the same organ. It is an alarming injury of the skin that could be signs of serious diseases like skin cancer. It also has a grotesque appearance, with the dark-brown-to-black discoloration of the skin representing the masses of dead cells.
The danger of necrosis does not only lie in its vulnerability to infection or its ominous appearance as a sign of skin disease, but it also spreads like an epidemic to other living skin cells, causing, even more, cell death around the necrotic skin injury. The spread of necrosis is caused by the lysosomes that caused the initial skin death. When the first cell dies, the lysosomes spread to other cells and subsequently break them down. When a large portion of the tissue is affected by necrosis, it is called gangrene.
Necrotic tissue spreads at a particular rate depending on the person’s immune system and condition. For example, if the patient had suffered from heavy bleeding and the wounds had started to show signs of necrosis, the necrotic tissue will soon spread at a fast rate due to the lack of blood and oxygen to support the living cells.
For a normal person who happened to suffer from this dead skin injury, the necrotic tissue will spread around the surrounding skin at a relatively slow rate, and this is because the cells are healthier and harder to kill.
Necrotic tissue spreads fast for people who are sick from simple ailments such as fever and flu. This is because their immune system has been tampered with by the illness, and it is, therefore, easier for the cells to be killed. Necrosis spreads even faster for people who are suffering from diabetes and other skin diseases.
A necrotic tissue that is infected by germs and bacteria spread significantly faster and leads to more complicated ailments that could be life threatening. The rate of spread is due to the fact that the cell death is worsened by the germs and bacteria as they reproduce and feed on tiny particles of the skin.