Body surface area: Mosteller vs Du Bois vs Haycock vs Gehan and George

At 170 cm and 70 kg the four formulas agree within 0.022 m², 1.2 percent of Mosteller. At 160 cm and 150 kg Du Bois gives 2.394 m² and Haycock 2.685 m², 0.291 m² apart, 11.3 percent of Mosteller’s 2.582 m². At 170 cm Du Bois gives the most up to 60 kg and the least from 70 kg.

Line chart of how far three body surface area formulas land from Mosteller, in percent, at a height of 170 cm for weights from 40 to 160 kg. Mosteller is a solid line with circles, flat at zero. Du Bois, a dashed line with squares, runs from +3.8 percent at 40 kg through zero between 60 and 70 kg to −6.4 percent at 160 kg; Haycock, a dotted line with triangles, runs from −1.7 percent at 40 kg through zero between 60 and 70 kg to +3.6 percent at 160 kg; Gehan and George, a dash-dot line with diamonds, runs from −0.1 percent at 40 kg through zero between 40 and 50 kg to +1.9 percent at 160 kg. A hatched band from 86.7 kg marks a BMI of 30 and over. — Each formula’s area minus Mosteller’s, as a percentage of Mosteller’s, at 170 cm. Every plotted point is a row of the table. Image © ScienceQuest, CC BY 4.0: free to reuse with credit and a link to this page, as the image licence explains.

Body surface area at 170 cm, 40 to 160 kg

Body surface area by each formula at a height of 170 cm, for weights from 40 to 160 kg, with each formula’s difference from Mosteller
Weight (kg)	Body surface area				Difference from Mosteller
Weight (kg)	Mosteller m²	Du Bois m²	Haycock m²	Gehan and George m²	Du Bois %	Haycock %	Gehan and George %
40	1.374	1.427	1.351	1.373	+3.8	−1.7	−0.1
50	1.537	1.569	1.523	1.540	+2.1	−0.9	+0.2
60	1.683	1.695	1.680	1.692	+0.7	−0.2	+0.5
70	1.818	1.810	1.826	1.831	−0.5	+0.4	+0.7
80	1.944	1.915	1.962	1.962	−1.5	+0.9	+0.9
90	2.062	2.014	2.090	2.084	−2.3	+1.4	+1.1
100	2.173	2.106	2.212	2.200	−3.1	+1.8	+1.2
110	2.279	2.193	2.328	2.311	−3.8	+2.1	+1.4
120	2.380	2.276	2.440	2.417	−4.4	+2.5	+1.5
130	2.478	2.354	2.547	2.518	−5.0	+2.8	+1.6
140	2.571	2.430	2.650	2.616	−5.5	+3.1	+1.7
150	2.661	2.502	2.751	2.711	−6.0	+3.4	+1.8
160	2.749	2.572	2.848	2.802	−6.4	+3.6	+1.9

A difference is that formula’s area minus Mosteller’s, as a percentage of Mosteller’s. The chart draws the three difference columns.

Body surface area at 8 body sizes

Body surface area by each formula for 8 combinations of height and weight, with the BMI of each and the spread of the four
Height and weight (BMI)	Body surface area				Spread of the four
Height and weight (BMI)	Mosteller m²	Du Bois m²	Haycock m²	Gehan and George m²	Spread m²	Spread % of Mosteller
150 cm, 45 kg (20.0)	1.369	1.370	1.370	1.384	0.014	1.1
160 cm, 55 kg (21.5)	1.563	1.563	1.566	1.577	0.013	0.9
165 cm, 60 kg (22.0)	1.658	1.659	1.661	1.670	0.012	0.7
170 cm, 70 kg (24.2)	1.818	1.810	1.826	1.831	0.022	1.2
180 cm, 85 kg (26.2)	2.062	2.049	2.073	2.073	0.025	1.2
190 cm, 100 kg (27.7)	2.297	2.283	2.311	2.306	0.029	1.2
160 cm, 150 kg (58.6)	2.582	2.394	2.685	2.642	0.291	11.3
200 cm, 90 kg (22.5)	2.236	2.266	2.229	2.232	0.037	1.6

The spread is the highest of the four minus the lowest, worked out from the unrounded areas, so it can differ by 0.001 from the printed cells. BMI in kg/m², as the BMI calculator prints it.

Mosteller body surface area by height and weight

Body surface area by the Mosteller formula, in m², for heights from 140 to 200 cm and weights from 40 to 140 kg
Height (cm)	Weight (kg)
Height (cm)	40	50	60	70	80	90	100	110	120	130	140
140	1.25	1.39	1.53	1.65	1.76	1.87	1.97	2.07	2.16	2.25	2.33
145	1.27	1.42	1.55	1.68	1.80	1.90	2.01	2.10	2.20	2.29	2.37
150	1.29	1.44	1.58	1.71	1.83	1.94	2.04	2.14	2.24	2.33	2.42
155	1.31	1.47	1.61	1.74	1.86	1.97	2.07	2.18	2.27	2.37	2.46
160	1.33	1.49	1.63	1.76	1.89	2.00	2.11	2.21	2.31	2.40	2.49
165	1.35	1.51	1.66	1.79	1.91	2.03	2.14	2.25	2.35	2.44	2.53
170	1.37	1.54	1.68	1.82	1.94	2.06	2.17	2.28	2.38	2.48	2.57
175	1.39	1.56	1.71	1.84	1.97	2.09	2.20	2.31	2.42	2.51	2.61
180	1.41	1.58	1.73	1.87	2.00	2.12	2.24	2.35	2.45	2.55	2.65
185	1.43	1.60	1.76	1.90	2.03	2.15	2.27	2.38	2.48	2.58	2.68
190	1.45	1.62	1.78	1.92	2.05	2.18	2.30	2.41	2.52	2.62	2.72
195	1.47	1.65	1.80	1.95	2.08	2.21	2.33	2.44	2.55	2.65	2.75
200	1.49	1.67	1.83	1.97	2.11	2.24	2.36	2.47	2.58	2.69	2.79

Areas in m², to the nearest 0.01. For a height or weight between the steps, the body surface area calculator gives all four formulas.

Why the formulas disagree

Each formula splits the area between height and weight in its own proportion. Mosteller raises both to the power 0.5; the powers on height and weight are Du Bois 0.725 and 0.425, Haycock 0.3964 and 0.5378, Gehan and George 0.42246 and 0.51456. Quadruple the weight at 170 cm, from 40 to 160 kg, and Mosteller’s area grows 2.00 times, Du Bois’s 1.80 times and Haycock’s 2.11 times. Du Bois leans hardest on height, so it reads high for light and tall people and low for heavy ones.

Du Bois and Du Bois chose both powers and the constant to fit nine people, and put the error at 1.5 percent on average and up to 5 percent in people “of unusual shape”. Haycock’s group worked out the area of 81 people, from premature infants to adults, from 34 body measurements each, and found Du Bois reading low below 0.7 m², by 7.96 percent in newborns. Gehan and George fitted theirs to 401 people from Boyd’s 1935 data; Mosteller cut it to one square root for pocket calculators.

At a BMI of 18.5 to under 30 the spread of the four stays within 1.6 percent of Mosteller’s area in the body size table, but in 1 cm and 1 kg steps from 150 to 200 cm at those BMIs it reaches 4.6 percent, at 150 cm and 67 kg. At 160 cm and 150 kg it is 11.3 percent. With obesity the dosing protocol also sets which weight goes in, actual or adjusted, and whether the dose is capped at a BSA of 2 m² (Mohamed 2026).

The formulas

Mosteller [1]: $\mathrm{BSA} = \sqrt{\frac{h \times w}{3600}}$
Du Bois and Du Bois [2]: $\mathrm{BSA} = 0.007184 \times h^{0.725} \times w^{0.425}$
Haycock, Schwartz and Wisotsky [3]: $\mathrm{BSA} = 0.024265 \times h^{0.3964} \times w^{0.5378}$
Gehan and George [4]: $\mathrm{BSA} = 0.0235 \times h^{0.42246} \times w^{0.51456}$

h is height in cm and w is weight in kg; each gives BSA in m². Du Bois wrote his constant as 71.84 with the area in cm².

Where each formula holds

Each formula’s sample, the people it holds for, and where it does not apply
Formula	Fitted in	Holds for	Not for
Mosteller (1987)	No measurements of its own: a one-line simplification of Gehan and George	The range of Gehan and George’s data, infants to adults, since it simplifies their formula (Mohamed 2026)	Obesity: none of the common formulas had been validated in obese patients when Livingston and Lee (2001) measured 45 people weighing 51.3 to 248.6 kg and fitted a formula on weight alone
Du Bois (1916)	Nine people measured in the authors’ laboratory	Adults of average build, with an average error the authors put at 1.5 percent	Obesity, where it read up to 20 percent low (Livingston and Lee 2001); infants, where it reads up to 7.96 percent low (Haycock 1978); and people of unusual shape, where the authors allowed up to 5 percent
Haycock (1978)	81 people from premature infants to adults, each area worked out from 34 measurements	Areas from under 0.2 m² to over 2.0 m², the range of its sample (r = 0.998)	Obesity: none of the common formulas had been validated in obese patients when Livingston and Lee (2001) measured 45 people weighing 51.3 to 248.6 kg and fitted a formula on weight alone; at 160 cm and 150 kg it gives 2.685 m², the most of the four
Gehan and George (1970)	401 people from Boyd’s 1935 data: 229 infants, 42 children and 130 adults	Infants to adults, the range of Boyd’s data	Obesity: none of the common formulas had been validated in obese patients when Livingston and Lee (2001) measured 45 people weighing 51.3 to 248.6 kg and fitted a formula on weight alone

Calculators and simulators

A study tool, not a clinical one

This page exists for comparing the surface area formulas against each other, and seeing how far apart they land before a dose depends on the answer. It is not clinical decision support and must not be used to treat anybody.

A row in these tables is not your patient. Each row fixes the other inputs at the values its caption gives, and a real patient differs in all of them at once, so work a patient’s own figures in the calculator.
Check the units before you trust a number. American and Indian reports mostly use mg/dL, while British, Canadian and Australian reports use mmol/L or µmol/L, and a unit mismatch is the most common way an otherwise correct formula produces a dangerous answer.

Three more cautions

Each formula has a population. The table of where each one holds gives the people each was fitted in, and each is least reliable outside them.
Know which equation your course or laboratory uses. The ones compared here give different numbers for the same patient, which is what the tables show.
Every cell is worked by the calculators’ own code. If a figure does not match what you were taught, check it against the formulas above, and tell us if we have it wrong. How the tools are checked is set out in the editorial policy.

Sources

Mosteller RD. Simplified calculation of body-surface area. N Engl J Med 1987;317(17):1098. doi:10.1056/NEJM198710223171717
Du Bois D, Du Bois EF. Clinical calorimetry, tenth paper: a formula to estimate the approximate surface area if height and weight be known. Arch Intern Med 1916;17(6):863-871. A free scan of the issue is at archive.org/details/sim_jama-internal-medicine_1916-06-15_17_6. doi:10.1001/archinte.1916.00080130010002
Haycock GB, Schwartz GJ, Wisotsky DH. Geometric method for measuring body surface area: a height-weight formula validated in infants, children, and adults. J Pediatr 1978;93(1):62-66. doi:10.1016/S0022-3476(78)80601-5
Gehan EA, George SL. Estimation of human body surface area from height and weight. Cancer Chemother Rep 1970;54(4):225-235. The journal is not online; its sample is as Mohamed and colleagues (2026) describe it. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/5527019/
Livingston EH, Lee S. Body surface area prediction in normal-weight and obese patients. Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab 2001;281(3):E586-E591. doi:10.1152/ajpendo.2001.281.3.E586
Mohamed AAA, van Londen M, Stevens J, Heerspink HJL, Gansevoort RT. Indexing for body surface area when assessing kidney function. Nephrol Dial Transplant 2026;41(9):1595-1605. doi:10.1093/ndt/gfag063
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Adult BMI Categories. For adults 20 and older. https://www.cdc.gov/bmi/adult-calculator/bmi-categories.html