Documentation of Wound Surface Area from Tracings of Wound Perimeters

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Abstract
Physical therapists frequently treat patients with open wounds. For effective monitoring and objective documenting of the status of open wounds, therapists need accurate and practical methods to describe wound size. Several methods of documenting wound size have been reported in the literature. One method uses photographs of a wound pictured in conjunction with some linear reference standard.1,2 Such photographs, which are two dimensional and uniplanar, may produce considerable distortion of three-dimensional multiplanar wound surfaces, particularly when the wounds are located on contoured body surfaces. A more common method of documenting wound size is the manual measurement and description of the general dimensions of a wound.3–5 Although both techniques allow objective documentation of wound size, neither measures the actual surface area of the wound. Documenting wound healing may be incomplete without such a measurement, particularly when wounds are irregularly shaped.

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