![]() ![]() Further complicating the issue is that burn wounds can progress in severity during the first 48 hours, and thus it is highly recommended to continuously monitor early-stage burns when deciding optimal treatment 10. Superficial-partial thickness burns can generally heal via natural re-epithelization with minimal scaring while deep-partial thickness burns will often require extensive surgical excision and grafting 9. This is problematic as treatment methods can vary dramatically depending on skin burn severity. While useful for evaluating superficial and full-thickness burns, clinical observation is widely considered suboptimal for distinguishing between different types of partial-thickness burns. Even when non-fatal, skin burns are a leading cause of future morbidity, prolonged hospitalization, disfigurement, and disability, which can all inadvertently lead to further negative socio-economic repercussions 6.ĭespite a field accuracy of about 50% to 76%, subjective visual and tactile assessments by a trained physician are the most commonly used method for assessing skin burn severity due to their simplicity and speed in clinical settings 7, 8. In the civilian sector, skin burns are problematic as an estimated 300,000 people world-wide die from fire-related burn injuries every year, with the majority of cases occurring in low and middle income countries 5. Due to the nature of explosive devices such as landmines, artillery munitions, mortar rounds, and improvised explosive devices, these multifaceted wounds can be highly complex and must be quickly diagnosed and treated in a potentially resource limited environment. ![]() Skin burns are a significant source of battlefield injury and have accounted for approximately 4% of all combat mortalities since World War II 1, 2, 3, 4. ![]() This low-cost, rapid, and non-invasive color analysis approach demonstrates the potential of dye-loaded liquid bandages as a method for skin burn assessment in settings such as emergency medicine triage and low resource environments. The finding was verified using fluorescence imaging, tissue cross-sectioning, and histopathology. Quantitative linear mixed effects models of color images from a four day porcine burn study demonstrate that colorimetric changes within the HSB colorspace can be used to estimate burn depth severity immediately after burning. Here we present a practical method for the early visualization of skin burn severity using a topically applied fluorescein-loaded liquid bandage and an unmodified commercial digital camera. Apart from being invasive, costly, and time-consuming, this method can suffer from heterogeneous sampling errors when interrogating large burn areas. When the appropriate resources are available, the current gold standard for assessing skin burns is through tissue punch biopsies followed by histological analysis. These multifaceted wounds can be highly complex and must be quickly diagnosed and treated to achieve optimal outcomes. They are especially problematic in low resource environments where non-fatal injuries can lead to high morbidity rates, prolonged hospitalization, and disability. Skin burns are a significant source of injury in both military and civilian sectors.
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