Role of Digital Assessment in Wound Management

Jacob A. Chakiath, Ravi K. Chittoria*, Nishad Kerakada, Neljo Thomas, Barathkumar S. Parthiban, Adithyakevin James, Perumal Chakkravarthy and Varun Rajanna

Role of Digital Assessment in Wound Management.

Wound measurement is an important part of management. Any change in
wound area indirectly provides information about wound healing or response to current treatment.

Continuation of ineffective treatment would prolong hospital
stay and can be
avoided by tracking the wound correctly. Therefore, objective
technique of accurate measurement and documentation is needed for wound
management.

Digital planimetry is a good tool for wound measurement. It helps the
clinician in understanding the behaviour of the wound and to take necessary action to prevent the increment and enhance
the healing.

Wound measurement using digital planimetry gives an idea for deciding the current treatment efficacy and for
changing the current treatment. It’s an effective technique for accurate
wound measurement and documentation in wound management.

Traditionally wound measurement was done by photographic record, comparison, ruler method, graph method. Clinical
photography is being used by most of the plastic surgeon as a part of record keeping and tracking the progress of the disease/wound. This is relatively simple and easy method, but being a subjective assessment, documentation is not possible for the use of further visits.

ImageJ is an easy, freely available, effective, cheaper tool for measurement of
wound surface area in clinical practice. It’s a
subjective wound measurement tool. With the help of digital planimetry, we
could accurately measure the wound size, behaviour of the wound and also enhance the healing by ETEWC.

 

Radiol Open J. 2022; 6(1): 4-6. doi: 10.17140/ROJ-6-136