Ideas That Work: Make Staging Pressure Injuries in Darkly Pigmented Patients Easier

Practical pearls from your colleagues

A poster from the National Pressure Injury Advisory Panel (NPIAP) can help providers understand the differences in what to look for while staging pressure injuries of people with lightly pigmented skin versus those with darkly pigmented skin.

Pressure injuries can present differently in patients depending on their skin tone, says the NPIAP. For example, with the non-blanchable erythema of intact skin — a Stage 1 pressure injury  — people with darker skin might not experience blanching over the injured area, but the color over the wound is still different than in the non-injured skin around it. The discoloration in darkly pigmented skin may also be different for patients with deep-tissue pressure injuries, a serious wound that in lightly pigmented patients generally presents as persistent non-blanchable discoloration that is deep red, maroon or purple.

NPIAP, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the prevention and management of pressure injuries, offers the following tips for staging darkly pigmented skin:

• Moisten the skin.
• Inspect for changes in pigmentation.
• Palpate for edema.
• Ask about pain in the area.
• Use indirect light to damage skin.

NPIAP offers a wide selection of free downloadable illustrations of pressure injuries for use as educational tools at www.npiap.com.  OSM