Alexander Burns Wallace

1929 University of Edinburgh MB ChB graduation portrait of A.B. Wallace. Alexander Burns Wallace (1906–1974) was a Scottish plastic surgeon. He was a founding member and president (1951) of the British Association of Plastic Surgeons, and the first editor of the British Journal of Plastic Surgery. In authorship he appears as A. B. Wallace.

Life He was born in Edinburgh in 1906, the son of Alexander Wallace and his wife, Christina Bishop.

In 1972 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Douglas Guthrie, Anthony Elliot Ritchie, Neil Campbell, and Sir Edmund Hirst.

Following the closure of Bangour General Hospital where he had been the lead surgeon in burns and plastic surgery, the Wallace Burns Unit was founded in his name at the new St. John's Hospital, Livingston, which opened in 1989.

He retired to Ceres in Fife and died there on 14 December 1974, leaving a wife, son, three daughters and three granddaughters.

For patients over the age of 16 years the 'Rule of Nines' indicates the percentage of skin surface area accounted for by various parts of the body. The rule estimates nine per cent for the head and each arm, 18 per cent each for lower limbs and front and back of the trunk, and 1 per cent for the perineal region. The extent of a burn is expressed as the percentage of the body surface area affected called the total burn surface area (TBSA). The TBSA is used to help calculate the volume of fluid required in the initial resuscitation of the patient. This can be calculated by the widely used Parkland Formula or the Muir and Barclay formula. TBSA is also used in the prediction of patient prognosis.