Current American Burn Association guidelines state that any child with a greater than 10% total body surface area (TBSA) burn should be admitted to a center capable of caring for pediatric burns, rather than being discharged after wound management. However, physician use of TBSA% estimation techniques is variable. An excellent free tool for estimating TBSA is available online, allows for automatic weight based calculation, and allows printing of your diagram. The diagram is available at http://www.sagediagram.com/. More to come...
References
Reed, JL and WJ Pomerantz. Emergency management of pediatric burns. Pediatric Emergency Care. 21 (2): Feb, 2005: 118-129.
