Am Fam Physician. 2017;95(12):757
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Author disclosure: No relevant financial affiliations.
to the editor: In April 2016, the National Pressure Ulcer Advisory Panel (NPUAP) announced terminology updates.1 A summary of the updates are as follows:
Skin damage that occurs as the result of pressure should be referred to as pressure injury rather than pressure ulcer, because skin damaged from pressure can be intact or ulcerated. This change in terminology also applies to the staging classification system.
The staging system for pressure injuries now uses Arabic numbers rather than Roman numerals.
Suspected deep-tissue injury has been renamed deep-tissue pressure injury.
Changes to the existing International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision terminology are anticipated as a result of the updated NPUAP terminology. Additionally, the National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators will be incorporating the updated terminology in their quality-reporting documents. Visit the NPUAP website at http://www.npuap.org for more information about these changes.1
editor's note: Table 1 and portions of the article have been updated to reflect these new classifications from the NPUAP.