The healing wound: a comparison of three clinically 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 less than or equal to 0.001). However, repeated measures analysis of variance among the three methods revealed that they were all significantly different (p less than or equal to 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.