Investigation of the Compatibility Among Innovative Methods in Measuring the Area and Depth of Pressure Injuries

Wound healing is a complex process and wound care and evaluation is one of the most important problems in current medicine. Wounds are seen in clinics as diabetic foot ulcers (DFU), arterial and venous ulcers, pressure injuries, surgical wounds and so on. Pressure injuries (PI) have a high mortality rate (29%) among elderly individuals. The prevalence of PIs in different countries worldwide varies between 6% and 18.5% in acute care settings. Wound assessment is an integral part of nursing practice.

Improper assessment of wounds may lead to inadequate wound care, resulting in delayed wound healing, increased risk of infection, increased costs, and decreased patient quality of life. Wound measurement is a useful quantitative finding in wound assessment, used as a practical approach to monitor wound healing. An ideal wound measurement method should be practical, comfortable for the patient, high accuracy, reliability and applicability. In clinical practice, it is essential to regularly reassess wounds to monitor changes in size, depth, and appearance over time.

With the emergence of new techniques and technologies, there is a need for methods that can be considered as the gold standard in the measurement of wound dimensions. It is seen in the literature that studies comparing two- and three-dimensional measurement methods are generally carried out on superficial wounds and very limited wound types. In addition, there are hardly any studies comparing depth measurements with three-dimensional methods. In this direction, it was necessary to conduct this study in order to create evidence-based data in the field. The research has the quality of being the first and original study in our country that evaluates the compatibility of innovative methods in the area measurement of PIs and measures the wound depth.