Comparison of patient satisfaction and practitioner satisfaction with wound appearance after traumatic wound repair.

Introduction: Existing cosmetic scales for wounds are based only on practitioners' evaluations. They have not been validated using the patient's assessment.

Objective: To validate a previously developed wound cosmesis scale by determining the relationship between patient and practitioner assessments of cosmetic outcome following traumatic wound repair.

Methods: A convenience sample of patients with lacerations repaired in an ED were evaluated at the time of suture removal. Practitioners assigned 0 or 1 point each for the presence or absence of a step-off of borders; contour irregularities; margin separation; edge inversion; excessive distortion; and overall appearance. A total cosmetic score was calculated by adding the categories above. As previously defined, a score of 6 was considered optimal; < 6 was considered "suboptimal." Patients, blinded to the physician score, assessed their degrees of satisfaction with the cosmetic outcome of the wounds using a 100-mm visual analog scale (VAS). Because VAS scores were not normally distributed, practitioner scores were compared with patient satisfaction scores using a Mann-Whitney U test.

Results: 125 patients were enrolled, of whom 64% were male; the median age was 19.5 years (interquartile range = 8-33 years). Wounds were located predominantly on the face, scalp, or neck (47%) and upper extremity (35%), and had a median length of 2 cm. The 86 lacerations given optimal practitioner scores had a median patient satisfaction score of 97 mm; the 39 "suboptimal" lacerations had a median patient satisfaction score of 87 mm (p = 0.0006).

Conclusion: Lacerations that practitioners considered to have optimal cosmetic appearances at the time of suture removal received higher patient satisfaction scores than did lacerations considered to be suboptimal. This provides a measure of validity to this 6-item categorical cosmetic scale.