Erin Allman-Updike

Right.

Like a kid.

Right.

might have a less body surface area to cause severe effects.

But all of that is really like, it's so depends on the person, right?

So there's not like a clear cut definition of like, this is a major burn versus a minor burn or a severe burn versus a non-severe burn.

But calculating that body surface area is a really important part of the care of a person and understanding like how severe their outcomes are going to be.

And the way that we do that is there's a couple different ways.

There's a fast and ready way kind of that is called the rule of nines.

Mm-hmm.

And that is that we just split up an adult body area into areas that are about 9%.

So our head is about 9% of our body surface.

Our chest, the front side of our chest and the front side of our abdomen are each 9%.

And same thing with the back.

So that's like 18 and 18.

And then the front of our legs are 9%.

The back of our legs are 9%.

And our two arms put together are 9%.

And then an extra 1% for the genitals.

The other way that you can do it, though, because that calculation does not hold true for children, because children, their head is a significantly larger body surface, especially for babies.