Clinical cases
IMAGING ANALYSIS OF PHYSICAL PARAMETERS IN THE EVOLUTION OF A CHEMICAL BURN CASE OF ABOUT 2% BODY SURFACE AREA - CASE PRESENTATION
Burns are one of the most serious skin lesions, chemical burning, in our case, usually destroys all layers of the skin. The deep dermal burns and burns of all thickness require early surgical excision and tegumentary grafting, because in the absence of surgery, their healing extends for more than 3 weeks and produces vicious, keloid or hypertrophic scars with functional and aesthetic sequelae. Determining the depth of burns is one of the challenges faced by the plastic surgeon. Differentiation is usually done on clinical criteria, and the diagnostic accuracy in these cases is not more than 76% (1). We hereby present the case of a 72-year-old patient who suffered a chemical (cystostatic substance) burn in the foot level. Monitoring of wound development and treatment efficacy was achieved through photographs taken at each dress change. These were analyzed according to specific physico-mathematical formulas. The development of a diagnostic algorithm based on these formulas indicated the appearance of granulation tissue about 2 days prior to clinical degradation. The granulation tissue is an essential structure for grafting and wound healing. Using the IIBelaborated algorithm we could follow the efficiency of the applied treatment and set the optimum operator moment for grafting, the postoperative results being very good. Imaging physics (the analysis of the images) can be a valuable tool for medical investigation, both for the proper assessment of the degree of burns (its degree) and for the determination of the effectiveness of the applied treatment and the appearance of the granulation tissue