The skin consists of three layers ---- outer epidermis, inner dermis and hypodermis. The sensory structures are contained within the dermis and consist of free nerve endings (pain, temperature and touch). Messengers corpuscles (light discriminatory touch ) and A-delta fibres (fast pain) and nonmyelinated C fibres (slow and chronic pain) to synapse in the substance of gelatinosa of the dorsal horn of the spinal cord.
Fibres then cross the midline of the spinal cord to ascend to the thalamus in the lateral spinothalamic tract and from there to the postcentral gyrus, where the conscious perception of the stimulus may occur. The instant pain that follows a burn injury is due to the stimulation of skin nociceptors that respond to heat thermoreceptors or mechanical distortion mechanoreceptors. Exogenous (hydrofluoric acid) or endogenous (histamine, serotonin, bradykinases, leukotriene, and…
