In physiology and medicine, the body surface area (BSA) is the measured or calculated surface of a human body. For many clinical purposes BSA is a better indicator of metabolic mass than body weight because it is less affected by abnormal adipose mass. Nevertheless, there have been several important critiques of the use of BSA in determining the dosage of medications with a narrow therapeutic index like many chemotherapy medications. Typically there is a 4-10 fold variation in cytotoxic drug clearance between individuals due to differing activity of drug elimination processes related to genetic and environmental factors. This can lead to significant overdosing and even more perniciously to underdosing (and increased risk of cancer recurrence). It is also thought to be a distorting factor in Phase I and II trials that may result in potentially helpful medications being prematurely rejected. The trend to personalized medicine is one approach to counter this weakness. Estimation of BSA is simpler than many measures of volume.
Read more about Body Surface Area: Uses, Calculation, Average Values
Other articles related to "body surface area, area, body":
... Moderate burns are defined as Age 10-50yrs partial thickness burns involving 15-25% of total body surface area Age 50 partial thickness burns involving 10-20% of total body surface area Full ...
... Total body surface area (TBSA) is an assessment measure of burns of the skin ... In adults, the "rule of nines" is used to determine the total percentage of area burned for each major section of the body ... In some cases, the burns may cover more than one body part, or may not fully cover such a part in these cases, burns are measured by using the casualty's palm as a reference point for 1% of ...
... pumped by the left ventricle each minute Cardiac index Cardiac output normalized for body surface area Stroke volume Amount of blood pumped by the left ventricle each ...
... Children with >10% total body surface area burns, and adults with >15% total body surface area burns need formal fluid resuscitation and monitoring (blood pressure, pulse ... Parkland formula 4mL x (percentage of total body-surface-area sustaining non-superficial burns) x (person's weight in kgs) ...
Famous quotes containing the words area, body and/or surface:
“If you meet a sectary, or a hostile partisan, never recognize the dividing lines; but meet on what common ground remains,—if only that the sun shines, and the rain rains for both; the area will widen very fast, and ere you know it the boundary mountains, on which the eye had fastened, have melted into air.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.”
—Bible: New Testament, 1 Corinthians 12:12.
“How easily it falls, how easily I let drift
On the surface of morning feathers of self-reproach:
How easily I disperse the scolding of snow.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)