Body Surface Area (BSA) Calculator
Calculating body surface area is extremely useful in fields of medicine and physiology, but regular people use it too for fitness, health assessments, and similar.
In addition, knowing how to calculate your body surface area can be challenging, and that's where the BSA calculator comes into play. Many people prefer to calculate their body surface since it is a much more accurate indicator of metabolism than weight. Also, many doctors base their prescriptions on the BSA formula.
Keep reading below to learn everything you need about the body surface calculator, how to use it, and why it is important.
Quick Summary
- A body surface area calculator is a piece of online software that estimates the total surface of your body.
- The body surface calculator is exceptionally useful in the fields of physiology and medicine.
- The calculator uses many formulas to estimate the total surface of your body, including Mosteller, Haycock, Fujimoto, Gehan, and George formulas.
What Is a Body Surface Area Calculator?
A body surface area calculator is an online tool used to calculate the total surface of your entire body. It is used in many scientific fields and is a more precise indicator of metabolism than your body weight or even a BMI calculator.
BSA, or body surface area, is important since it provides a more accurate indicator of metabolic mass. In addition, metabolic mass is estimated using fat-free mass. BSA is often used for clinical purposes since it is the most precise indicator of metabolic mass. Furthermore, BSA is used in clinical settings, such as determining cardiac index and chemotherapy dosages, which fall under cancer treatment.
The BSA Formula
Many different formulas are used to calculate your body's total surface. Most of the common BSA calculators use the usual form, the Du Bois formula, by default.
However, other BSA formulas in the advanced mode include Mosteller, Boyd, Haycock, Gehan and George, Fujimoto, Shuter, Takahira, and Schlich and Aslani. All formulas require simple information, such as your height and weight.
Below, you can find the example of using the Mollster formula:
- First, take your height in centimeters
- Second, take your weight in kilograms
- Third, multiply your height by your weight
- Fourth, Divide the result by 3600
- Fifth, take a square root of the earlier result
For example, if you weigh 60 kilograms and your height is 170 cm, the approximate calculation of the surface of your body would be 1.67 meters squared. However, many medical practitioners prefer other BSA formulas, such as Gehan & George or Haycock.
Why Use This Body Surface Area Calculator?
You should use this body surface area calculator because it is the easiest way to calculate your body's surface without effort and to understand your ideal fat percentage.
In addition, it uses advanced body surface area formulations to make the most accurate results.
There is no need to calculate your body surface area on your own.
By using the calculator, you get the chance to avoid tedious calculations by using complicated alternative and manual approaches.
You can easily find the surface of your body with this calculator as if it is a flat area.
Even though the body surface area calculator is based on complicated equations, it is still pretty straightforward to use, and it only takes a couple of seconds until the results arrive.
In addition, the only information you should provide for a successful calculation of your body's surface is your height and body weight.
Furthermore, it is the fact that knowing how to calculate your total body surface gives you insight into your level of physical health, which other metrics simply fail to do.
Also, your body's surface area is a predictor of many coronary artery diseases, such as coronary artery calcium.
This is why BSA is better than body mass index. It gives you a good analysis of your general status of health and is based just on weight and height measurements.
How to Calculate BSA?
To calculate BSA, you must use your BSA calculator and provide the necessary information.
Most of the time, the only information you need to provide to calculate your body surface area successfully is your weight and height.
The most straightforward way to calculate your body surface area is to use the body surface area calculator.
This is because the tool only needs your weight and height for all the calculations, meaning you will avoid unnecessary manual methods.
After you plug in the weight and height, the results are instantaneous.
However, it is very important to mention that you should know the average body surface area values if you are going to calculate your BSA. In addition, they are divided into categories of gender and age.
Here are some average body surface areas for different ages and gender:
- Children of 2 years: 0.5m²
- Infants: 0.25 m²
- Children of 10 years: 1.14m²
- Men: 1.9m²
- Women: 1.6m²
These estimations are based on a large corpus of data, and you shouldn't rely on them since they only represent the average values which can be useful in some instances.
FAQs
You calculate body surface area by using a body surface area calculator. In addition, you must provide some metrics, such as your body weight and height, for the most accurate results.
A normal BSA is 1.9 m2 for adult males and 1.6 m2 for adult females. These numbers are average values and are mostly used to calculate dosages for cytotoxic anticancer agents.
No, the body surface Area isn't the same as BMI. Body surface area is a rough estimate of your total body surface, and body mass index is a measurement that uses your weight and height to calculate your body fat mass.
Why Is Body Surface Area Calculator Important?
A body surface area calculator is so important because it is one of the most precise tools used to calculate the surface area of your body.
In addition, it is heavily used by scientists and medical staff since it gives more precise results regarding the current health status of a patient.
Lastly, body surface area differs from body mass index because the latter aims to determine the fat-free mass, while the first aims to determine the total surface area of your body.
