Editorial

摘要

Skin is the largest and arguably most vital organ in the body. In the hand, skin forms an even larger proportion of constitutive components. Skin problems account for the majority of hand operations particularly if one includes the emergency department repair of hand lacerations. Skin is the one structure that is involved, injured or transgressed and requires repair in every single operative hand procedure. When skin fails either primarily as in Epidermolysis bullosa, or secondarily as wound dehiscence after closure, the outcome of the operative procedure and the function of the hand is endangered. Meticulous handling and closure of the skin is recognised as an important factor in improving hand surgical outcomes. And yet, a review on published output in the JHS(E] over the last year from March 2012 reveals only three papers on "skin" out of a total 177 papers published. Of these three, one was a case report on skin necrosis in a 6 year old with Raynaud's (Bhat et al. 2012), one a short report on accurately marking the A1 pulley on the skin (Zhang et al. 2012), and one a full length article on the aesthetic outcome of fingertip reconstruction in complete syndactyly release (BuLic 20-13). By chance or design, these three are evenly distributed amongst the categories of articles published by the journal.