INTRODUCTION The Psoriasis Area Severity Index (PASI) is the most widely used scale for assessing the severity of psoriasis and for therapeutic decision making. On the basis of the PASI score, patients have been stratified into 2 groups: mild disease and moderate-to-severe disease. OBJECTIVE To draft a proposal for the definition and characterization of moderate psoriasis based on PASI and De...

In a recent review, Mathijssen et al. [1] proposed using flatfixed dosing regimens rather than body surface area (BSA)based dosing for anticancer drugs because “it does not seem worse than using BSA-based dosing” with regard to pharmacokinetic variability. We feel that this statement, together with other recent publications arguing against BSAbased dosing, requires a counterpart. Most cytotoxic...

The authors report on the variability in the integrated quantity of free (unbound) plasma cisplatin (area under curve of plasma concentration versus time, AUC). The AUC was measured in 19 patients receiving cisplatin doses proportional to body surface areas (BSA), 30 mg/m2 over 1 hour. The relative standard deviation (RSD, population standard deviation divided by mean value) for the maximum fre...

The pharmacokinetics of fluconazole in nine adult patients with severe (30 to 95% total body surface area) burns were studied. There was no significant difference in half-life (t1/2), clearance (CL), or volume of distribution (V) over time in five patients on days 3 and 8 of the study (P > 0.05). Combined parameter estimates (means +/- standard deviations) for all nine patients for the two stud...

PERPETUATED To estimate small burn areas, the usual teaching is that the patient’s palm is 1% of body surface area. It has never been very clear whether this means the palm surface of the whole hand or the palm excluding the fingers. This is a source of confusion to many junior doctors. The Advanced Trauma Life Support student manual has been in contradiction to evidence from the literature and...

The unbound serum concentration of valproic acid (VPA) is closely related to its therapeutic efficacy. In epileptic infants, the unbound VPA concentration varies largely from patient to patient, being difficult to predict using the reported equations for older children. To establish an equation to estimate the unbound concentration in infants, we empirically characterized the relationship betwe...

The British National Formulary and many reference textbooks recommend that drug dosages for children be calculated according to body surface area (BSA). Although many rules for drug dosage have been developed, based on age, weight and surface area, none has been accurate and simple enough for routine use. These rules are described, and one for clinical use: up to 30 kg, a child's drug dose may ...

We used state of the art CMR to define ranges for normal left ventricular volumes and systolic/diastolic function normalized to the influence of gender, body surface area and age. New CMR normalized ranges were modeled and displayed in graphical form for clinical use, with normalization for body surface area, gender, and age. The determination of normality, or the severity of abnormality, depen...

A series of body charts have been designed that are more representative of changing body proportion with increasing age. Being easier to use, these charts have led to a better estimate by the casualty doctor of the body surface area that has been burned.

We retrospectively compared body surface area (BSA) using the Mosteller formula square root(H x (w/360)) and a simple weight-based BSA formula ([4Wkg+7]/ [90+Wkg]). The participants were 363 children who underwent cardiac surgery from 1991 to 2000. Their age ranged from 5 days to 18 years, weight ranged from 1.2 kg to 98 kg and height ranged from 38 cm to 178 cm. There was excellent correlation...