Body Surface Area for 190 cm, 60 kg
Estimated body surface area for 190 cm, 60 kg, using five clinical formulas. Adjust any field below to personalize the result.
Body Surface Area (Mosteller)
1.780 m²
19.16 ft²
For a 190 cm, 60 kg person, the Mosteller formula — the most widely used in clinical practice — estimates a body surface area of 1.780 m² (19.16 ft²).
Formula Comparison
| Formula | BSA (m²) | BSA (ft²) | Published |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mosteller (most used) | 1.780 | 19.15 | 1987 |
| DuBois & DuBois | 1.837 | 19.78 | 1916 |
| Haycock | 1.756 | 18.90 | 1978 |
| Gehan & George | 1.773 | 19.08 | 1970 |
| Boyd | 1.743 | 18.77 | 1935 |
What is a Body Surface Area Calculator?
A body surface area (BSA) calculator estimates the total external surface area of your body — in square meters or square feet — from your height and weight. BSA is used far more in clinical medicine than in everyday fitness: it's the standard way doctors and pharmacists scale the dose of many medications, most notably chemotherapy drugs, since BSA correlates more closely with metabolic rate and organ function than body weight alone.
BSA is also used to calculate cardiac index (heart output relative to body size), to assess burn injury severity as a percentage of total body surface, and in some kidney function (GFR) calculations.
The Five Body Surface Area Formulas
Every BSA formula takes the same two inputs — height and weight — and combines them with different exponents and constants, derived from different reference studies over the past century. None can be directly verified against your actual surface area without specialized measurement, so all reputable formulas are estimates calibrated against small historical cadaver or live-subject studies.
Mosteller's 1987 formula — the simple square-root formula above — is now the most widely used in hospitals because it's easy to compute by hand and closely tracks the older, more complex DuBois formula. DuBois & DuBois (1916) is the oldest and was, for decades, the clinical standard despite being derived from measurements on just nine subjects. Haycock (1978) was specifically developed and validated for infants and children, where DuBois is known to be less accurate.
Why BSA Instead of Weight for Drug Dosing?
Many physiological processes — metabolic rate, cardiac output, kidney filtration rate — scale more closely with body surface area than with raw body weight, because surface area relates more directly to heat loss and blood volume distribution. For drugs with a narrow safety margin, like chemotherapy agents, dosing by BSA rather than weight alone produces more consistent blood concentrations and fewer dangerous over- or under-dosing errors across patients of very different builds.
An average adult BSA is roughly 1.7 m² (about 18.3 ft²), which is why chemotherapy doses are often quoted per m² of BSA rather than per kilogram of body weight.
BSA in Burn Assessment and Cardiac Medicine
Beyond drug dosing, BSA underlies the "rule of nines" and more detailed Lund-Browder charts used to estimate what percentage of a patient's total body surface has been burned, which directly drives fluid resuscitation calculations in burn treatment. In cardiology, dividing a patient's cardiac output by their BSA produces the "cardiac index," a size-normalized measure that allows fair comparison of heart performance between patients of very different body sizes.
Example — Your Current Inputs
For a 190 cm, 60 kg person, the Mosteller formula — the most widely used in clinical practice — estimates a body surface area of 1.780 m² (19.16 ft²).
Additional Example — A Pediatric Dosing Scenario
A 6-year-old child, 115 cm tall and weighing 21 kg, has a Mosteller BSA of about 0.81 m². If a chemotherapy protocol calls for 100 mg/m², the child's dose would be approximately 81 mg — dramatically less than an adult dose, and calculated specifically from BSA rather than a simple weight-based fraction of the adult dose, which would under- or over-estimate the physiologically appropriate amount.
About These Parameters
- Height and Weight
- Both are required by every formula above — BSA cannot be estimated from either measurement alone, since it depends on how mass is distributed across a person's frame. Use current, accurately measured height and weight for a meaningful clinical estimate.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which BSA formula do hospitals actually use?
Mosteller's formula is the most common in US clinical practice today due to its simplicity, and it tracks closely with DuBois across most adult body sizes. Some pediatric protocols specifically call for Haycock, which was validated on infants and children where DuBois is known to be less accurate. Always follow the specific formula a treatment protocol calls for rather than substituting your own preference.
How much do the five formulas typically disagree?
For an average adult build, the five formulas typically agree within about 2–5% of each other. The spread widens at the extremes — for infants, people with obesity, or unusually tall or short individuals — which is exactly why formulas like Haycock were developed for specific populations rather than relying on one universal equation.
Is BSA the same as skin surface area measured directly?
Not exactly — these formulas are statistical estimates calibrated against historical direct-measurement studies (some using coating or wrapping techniques on a small number of subjects), not a live measurement of your specific body. They are considered clinically reliable estimates, not precise physical measurements.
Should I use this calculator to adjust my own medication dose?
No — always follow dosing instructions from your prescribing physician or pharmacist. This calculator is an educational reference. Clinical dosing decisions account for many factors beyond a single BSA estimate, including kidney and liver function, concurrent medications, and specific protocol requirements.