Wound surface area measurement methods

Abstract

Assessment of progress in chronic wound healing is very important as it enables deciding when the applied therapy should be replaced with a more advanced one. Wound healing societies recommend using the rate in wound surface area reduction as a marker of the therapy effectiveness. If the wound surface area did not reduce by 50% or more in 4 weeks of standard treatment, advanced therapy options should be introduced. The decrease of wound surface area by 10–15% in a week may also be useful in estimating the probability of wound closure. There is a range of methods for wound surface area measurements that differ in the technology used, accuracy, repeatability, and level of required contact with the patient’s skin or wound itself. Technical advancement of these methods is very wide, from area estimation based on linear measurements to 3D techniques able to analyze skin curvature using sophisticated models. Some methods are based on specialized equipment, thus may be less useful in telemedicine than, for instance, those based on a smartphone with dedicated software. This review presents the current state-of-the-art methods in wound area measurements, presenting selected commercial devices and the latest developments.