Real-Life Math
You're about to perform a skin graft on a patient who suffered burns
on his arms. You'll be taking skin from his hip area and grafting it on to
the wound. But before you can begin, you must figure out how much skin to
remove for the graft.
To give yourself a good estimate of how much
skin to remove (measured in surface area), you need to consider the size of
the burned areas and how much extra skin may be required.
The
surface areas of the burned areas measure these sizes: 6 square inches, 5
square inches, 3 square inches, 2 square inches and 9 square inches.
To
ensure the graft takes, you'll take the top 3 layers of skin -- this decreases
the odds of overall rejection. The layers must come from the top layer of
the hip skin, to avoid causing an infection where the graft skin was removed.
You
will also need to take an extra 9 percent of the surface area to account for
skin lost or damaged during the process.
How much surface area skin
do you need to remove from the hip to cover the graft?