The program will be presented October 16th at the American College of Surgeons' Clinical Conference in Chicago.
Accurate assessment is a crucial early step in treatment planning.
The size and depth of burn wounds are the most important predictors of clinical outcome. The percentage of body surface area affected is used to calculate the patient's fluid and nutritional needs-which can be enormous for those with severe burns. The initial assessment is also used as a benchmark to monitor a patient's progress and as a research tool to compare effects of different treatments. But burn centers have long had to rely on the doctor's pencil drawings on paper charts, known as Lund-Browder diagrams , which show a standard male or female body, child or adult, from the front and back. Reliance on these two-dimensional charts results in wide variation in assessment of identical injuries by different professionals.