MEASUREMENT OF BODY-SURFACE AREA IN CHILDREN WITH LIVER-DISEASE BY A NOVEL 3-DIMENSIONAL BODY SCANNING DEVICE

Body surface area (BSA) is used in paediatrics to assess fluid require ment, drug doses, cardiac output and glomerular filtration rate. The a im of this study was to examine, in children with liver disease, the r elationship between BSA determined by a traditional nomogram and BSA m easured by a novel three-dimensional technique - Loughborough Anthropo metric Shadow Scanner (LASS). Subjects were 16 children, mean age 8.1 (range 3.6-14.9) years, with a variety of liver diseases. Twenty-eight controls had a mean age of 7.1 (3.1-10.5) years. All had LASS scans p erformed as well as 21 anthropometric measurements taken by a single o bserver. There was a significant relationship between BSA (LASS) and B SA nomogram for liver-diseased children (r=0.99) and controls (r=0.96) . The BSA nomogram values were significantly greater (P<0.05) than BSA (LASS) for liver-diseased subjects by 10.1% (-0.35 to +20.6; 95% conf idence interval), and for controls by 9.6% (4.1-23.2). Best prediction of BSA (LASS) for liver-disease subjects used height, body weight and gluteal furrow circumference [r(2)=0.997; standard estimated error (S EE) =0.015 m(2)] and for controls used body weight alone (r(2)=0.907; SEE=0.048 m(2)). BSA nomogram has no additional error in children with liver disease, but may overestimate BSA by 10% compared with a novel three-dimensional body surface scanning technique.