The healing wound: A comparison of three cliniciauy useful methods of measurement

A variety of different methods can be used to measure healing wounds. Among these are: 1) photographs, with subsequent area quantification using a digitizing pad with computer interface; 2) wound tracings; and 3) a Kundin measuring device. The purpose of this study was to compare three different clinically useful methods of measuring the area of healing wounds. Observations of venous stasis ulcers (n-36) and decubitus ulcers (n=37) were made on patients recruited from both inpatient and outpatient populations of a large metropolitan hospital. Analysis of the data using Pearson correlation revealed that all three methods were highly correlated, r=0.93 or above (p≤0.001). However, repeated measures analysis of variance among the three methods revealed that they were all significantly different (p≤0.001)from each other. It was concluded that: 1) either of the three methods can be used as a valid index of wound area, but 2) acetate tracing should be used to obtain the most accurate measure of actual wound area.