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