Pressure ulcer surface area measurement using instant full-scale photography and transparency tracings.
OBJECTIVE
An essential element in pressure ulcer management is the assessment of wound healing through measurement. The purpose of this study was to investigate the intraobserver and interobserver reliability of measuring pressure ulcers using instant full-scale photography combined with transparency tracings.


METHODS
26 patients in 3 long-term-care facilities.


METHODS
Duplicate photographs of 30 wounds from 26 subjects were obtained once a week over a period of 2 weeks, resulting in 120 photographs. Duplicate tracings of the photographs were subsequently assessed by 2 independent observers, resulting in 480 observations. The Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) was used as an indicator of chance-corrected agreement to estimate the relative reliability for the interobserver and intraobserver data. An Altman-Bland plot was also constructed to measure the relationship between interobserver differences and wound surface area.


RESULTS
Analysis of the data showed that all measurement comparisons were highly reliable (ICCs = 0.99). No statistical differences between observed surface areas could be demonstrated.


CONCLUSIONS
The combined wound measurement method described in this study represents a simple, practical, and inexpensive technique to accurately monitor and evaluate pressure ulcer healing. An instant full-scale photographic technique combined with transparency tracings of a wound should be considered for wound measurement, rather than each technique used independently. The results of this study indicate that measurements obtained with this combined method are highly reliable within and between observers.
Lucas
Cees
C
Department of Research and Innovation in Health Sciences, University of Professional Education, Hogeschool van Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Classen
Jody
J
Harrison
Deannine
D
De
HaanRobJ
H
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001830:Body Surface Area; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010781:Photography / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D003668:Pressure Ulcer / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000451:nursing; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D014945:Wound Healing