Erin Allman-Updike

Yeah.

That's a great question.

So total body surface area is the next thing that we have to look at.

So once we know – and I say it as if these are separate things.

They're really not.

Like we're looking at all of this at the same time if someone comes into a hospital with a burn.

But total body surface area is how much of your body surface is covered by this burn regardless of the degree.

Okay.

So you don't need to separate it by, oh, you know, this much surface area was the first degree versus second versus third.

Here we're just looking at how much of your skin got burned.

And this is actually the most important part in looking at mortality is surface area.

Surface area.

So how we classify something as a so-called minor burn, this is actually a lot more, I won't even say contentious in the literature because I don't think anyone's fighting over it, but it really depends on the situation, whether something is considered a severe or a minor burn.

In general, most people don't require hospitalization for burns that cover less than 10 percent of their body surface.

But that's a huge generalization because a burn on the face, a burn on the groin, a burn on the hands, even if it's significantly less than 10 percent, might still require hospitalization as well as depending on the thickness or the degree of that burn.

Right.

Or other injuries sustained or types of burn that it is.

Yeah, exactly.

So that that is really an overgeneralization.

Most of the time, if we're thinking about what is going to cause more likely to cause systemic symptoms, then we're looking at burns that are maybe more than 15 or 20 percent of your body's surface area, depending on the person and their age and like how big they are.