scholarly journals Epidemiological studies of burn patients in a burn center in Ghana: any clues for prevention?

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 1-4 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Agbenorku ◽  
K. Aboah ◽  
J. Akpaloo ◽  
R. Amankwa ◽  
B. Farhat ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Burn injuries are a serious problem worldwide, with most occurrences in low- and middle-income countries. Depending on the extent of injury, burn victims are faced with the challenges of fitting into society due to complications such as extensive scarring and contractures. The current study seeks to determine whether epidemiological studies of burn patients can provide guidelines to enhance burn prevention among the Ghanaian population. Methods Data from the Burns Registry of the Burns Intensive Care Unit (BICU) of Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) was obtained. Data on sex, age, aetiology, % total body surface area (TBSA), and admission outcomes from May 1, 2009, to April 30, 2013, were retrieved for a total of 487 patients during this period. Results Data on burn admissions comprising 263 (54.0 %) males and 224 (46.0 %) females were obtained from the Burns Registry. Children 0–10 years were the most affected age group. The yearly mean % TBSA ranged from 24.74 % to 35.07 %. The majority of burns was caused by scalding. Mortality rates ranged from 8.4 % to 32.0 % during the period under review. Conclusions The study shows that children of 10 years old and below are the most affected group; this may be due to inattention to these children by parents/caretakers. Safety and safe working environments should be provided at home and workplaces, and promotion of education on burn prevention should be intensified.

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (B) ◽  
pp. 711-714
Author(s):  
Doni Setiawan ◽  
Winsen Haryono

Background: Burns are devastating injuries, often resulting in significant morbidity, impairment of emotional well-being, and experienced quality of life. The etiological factors of burn injuries is vary considerably in different communities and regions, hence the need for detailed epidemiological studies to understand the problem status in different regions. Methods: A retrospective study of non-random consecutive sampling of medical records of Dr. Soedarso Regional Hospital in the period August 2017 – December 2020 Results: A total 108 samples were included in this study. There were 88 (81,5%)  male and 20 (18,5%) female; mostly adult (>18 years) 57 (52,8%). The etiology of burn injury was flame (35,2%), electrical (34,3%) and scald (30,6%). The most total body surface area (TBSA) of burns from 1-10%. The mortality rate was obtained by 8 (7.4%) respondents. Conclusion: : Based on the results of this study, that the major proportion of burn patients were male  and in the age group of > 18 years old. Flame was the most leading cause of burn. Considering the size of the burn, it was revealed that the most TBSA of  burns was 1-10%.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (11) ◽  
pp. 3389-3391
Author(s):  
Imran Khan ◽  
Taimur Khan ◽  
Shakil Asif ◽  
Syed Azhar Ali Kazmi ◽  
Subhan Ullah ◽  
...  

Background and Aim: Burn injuries patients generally suffer from various psychological and mental disorders especially in lower socio-economic groups. It can adversely affect their wellbeing and health. Proper consultation and clinical diagnosis need to be carried out on burns injuries patients from the early critical phase to rehabilitation phase recovery. The current study's aim was to determine the prevalence of psychiatric disorders in burn patients in a tertiary care hospital. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 82 attempted burn suicides, adult patients in Khattak Medical Center Peshawar, Khyber Teaching Hospital Peshawar and Divisional Headquarter hospital, Mirpur AJK for duration of six months from June 2020 to December 2020. All the patients admitted with suicides burns were of either gender and had ages above 15 years. The convenience technique was used for sampling. The patients’ demographic details such as psychiatric illness, self-immolation act motivation, burn injury depth, burn total body surface area, inhalation injury, hospitalization duration, and mortality was recorded on pre-designed proforma. Data analysis was carried out with SPSS version 20. Results: The mean age of all 82 patients was 28.9±5.2 with an age range of 14 to 55 years. Of the total, 66 (80.5%) were female while 16 (19.5%) were male. In this study, the most frequent suicidal attempt was made by the marital conflicted patients 50 (61%) followed by love affair failure 8 (9.7%). An overall mean of 53.6±19.6 was observed for total body surface area affected with a range of 15-100%. The hospital duration mean was 8.2±5.9 with a range of 1-38 days. Young, married, and rural area illiterate housewives were the most common self-inflicted/suicide burn injuries. The prime cause of such injuries was getting married. The mortality rate was found at 82.3%. Conclusion: Our study concluded that patient’s well-being and mental health could be severely affected by burn injuries. Prevalent depression was noted among severe burn injuries patients. Depression related to deformity could be prevented with early grafting, wound management, proper splinting, coping ability, intense physiotherapy, and long-term rehabilitation. Keywords: Burn; Depressed mood, Psychiatric morbidity, Posttraumatic stress disorder


2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S132-S132
Author(s):  
Shana M Henry ◽  
Nicole M Kopari ◽  
Mary Wolfe

Abstract Introduction California’s Creek Fire is not only the largest single wildfire in a state known for huge and destructive blazes, it spawned two rare fire tornados with winds over 100mph, a day after the fire started in early September. Huntington Lake and Mammoth Pool were the sites of these rare events leading to hundreds of trapped campers. An air rescue operation airlifted hundreds of trapped people to safety. Twenty days after the start of the fire, it had burned >300,000 acres with only 36% containment by fire crews. This review is an evaluation of our hospitals response team and the events surrounding that night. Methods Our on-call surgeon had called in the back-up surgeon to run a second trauma operating room. It was at this time, the news had reported trapped campers near Mammoth Pool. The burn surgeon was notified and reported to the emergency department (ED) as word of 65 possible victims spread. Local disaster response planning was initiated with an ED physician triaging patients at the regional airport. Initial calls were made to the division chief and burn medical director. The nursing director was notified along with any available nursing staff with 8 ICU nurses volunteering to report. Immediately, lateral transfer orders were placed for all burn patients housed in the burn center which has 10 ICU bed capabilities. Results The first helicopter landed with 5 of the burn victims presenting to our hospital. 4 of the victims were male and 1 female with ages ranging from 17 to 27. Total body surface area burn was estimated on each with 2 minor burns < 10% and 3 moderate sized burns of roughly 25%. These patients were quickly triaged in the ED and traumatic injuries evaluated. 3 of the patients were placed in ICU level care with the 2 remaining patients housed in the ED as word trickled in about another rescue effort with an additional 95 people. By morning, an additional 2 patients were transferred to our burn center from the surrounding hospitals and another 2 patients evaluated for burns sustained in separate events. All patients were taken to the operating room over the next 24–48 hours for excision and autologous spray on skin cells (ASCS) in combination with widely meshed skin grafts or ASCS alone. Conclusions Communication, teamwork, and personnel that are dedicated to the care of burn patients made this tragic incident manageable. The Creek Fire hit home for many of the burn staff not only because of the patients that were cared for, but because this area of California was a beloved respite for many. A debriefing with a chaplain, grief counselor, and psychotherapist, was held within 2 weeks of the incident to provide support to the staff during this devastating time.


2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 390-397 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luis Esaú López-Jácome ◽  
Tatiana Chávez-Heres ◽  
Noé Becerra-Lobato ◽  
María de Lourdes García-Hernández ◽  
Edgar Samuel Vanegas-Rodríguez ◽  
...  

Abstract Electrical burn injuries are one of the most severe forms of trauma. This study aims to investigate the infection complications in electrical burn patients in a referral hospital in Mexico City. A longitudinal retrospective study was conducted, involving electrical burn patients admitted from April 2011 to December 2016. Demographic and clinical data including type of electric burns, infection complications, and mortality was sought. Data were collected at admission and daily until discharge. Number and type of infections and microorganism isolations were sought. Risk factors for death were analyzed. A total of 111 patients were included, of which 96.4% were males, mean age of 31.6±16.22, most injuries were high voltage associated. The total body surface area average was 27.8% ± 19.63. The overall infection rate was 72.9 cases per 100 patients. Mortality was observed in 4 (3.6%) patients. About 59.1% (443/749) had growth for Gram-negative bacteria. Multidrug-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa was the most frequent microorganism isolated. Fungi were present in 4.9% of cases. Electrical burn injuries occurred in young males in our study. Infection was frequent, most of them caused by Gram-negative rods with an important rate of antimicrobial resistance; however, an important microbial diversity was present.


2011 ◽  
Vol 44 (01) ◽  
pp. 118-124
Author(s):  
Andrzej Piatkowski ◽  
Gerrit Grieb ◽  
Rittuparna Das ◽  
Ahmet Bozkurt ◽  
Dietmar Ulrich ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT Objective: Soluble CD163 (sCD163) has been previously shown to play a role in inflammatory and infectious diseases. This study, for the first time, investigates the characteristics and potential values of sCD163 in burn patients. A first look is taken on the changes of sCD163 levels in burn patients by comparing predefined subgroups at single time points. Materials and Methods: Serum samples of 18 patients with burn injuries were collected for biochemical analysis at the time of admission and in a chronological sequence of 12, 24, 48 and 120 h after the injury and were matched to clinical parameters. Statistical analysis was performed using the Mann-Whitney test, Wilcoxon signed rank and Pearson bivariate correlation. Results: Patients with sepsis showed a significant increase of sCD163 levels. sCD163 was correlated with leukocytes (P=0.035) over the time course of 120 h. Patients characterized by a burn size exceeding 25% of the total body surface area (TBSA) showed a significant increase of sCD163 between 12 and 48 h after burn injury (P=0.038). Conclusions: The first view on the characteristics of sCD163 in the serum of burn patients points out that sCD163 seems to be an early indicator for the susceptibility to sepsis. Furthermore, the changes in sCD163 serum levels within the first hours after burn trauma have great potential for early prediction of organ failure after burn injury.


Author(s):  
Nathan E Bodily ◽  
Elizabeth H Bruenderman ◽  
Neal Bhutiani ◽  
Selena The ◽  
Jessica E Schucht ◽  
...  

Abstract Patients with burn injuries are often initially transported to centers without burn capabilities, requiring subsequent transfer to a higher level of care. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of this treatment delay on outcomes. Adult burn patients meeting American Burn Association (ABA) criteria for transfer at a single burn center were retrospectively identified. A total of 122 patients were evenly divided into two cohorts – those directly admitted to a burn center from the field, versus those transferred to a burn center from an outlying facility. There was no difference between the transfer and direct admit cohorts with respect to age, percent total body surface area burned, concomitant injury, or intubation prior to admission. Transfer patients experienced a longer median time from injury to burn center admission (1 vs. 8 hours, p &lt, 0.01). Directly admitted patients were more likely to have inhalation burn (18 vs. 4, p &lt, 0.01), require intubation after admission (10 vs. 2, p = 0.03), require an emergent procedure (18 vs. 5, p &lt, 0.01), and develop infectious complications (14 vs. 5, p = 0.04). There was no difference in ventilator days, number of operations, length of stay, or mortality. The results suggest that significantly injured, high acuity burn patients were more likely to be immediately identified and taken directly to a burn center. Patients who otherwise met ABA criteria for transfer were not affected by short delays in transfer to definitive burn care.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Che Wei Chang ◽  
Feipei Lai ◽  
Mesakh Christian ◽  
Yu Chun Chen ◽  
Ching Hsu ◽  
...  

BACKGROUND Accurate assessment of the percentage of total body surface area (%TBSA) of burn wounds is crucial in the management of burn patients. The resuscitation fluid and nutritional needs of burn patients, their need for intensive unit care, and probability of mortality are all directly related to %TBSA. It is difficult to estimate a burn area of irregular shape by inspection. Many articles have reported discrepancy in estimating %TBSA by different doctors. OBJECTIVE We propose a method, based on deep learning, for burn wound detection, segmentation and calculation of % TBSA on a pixel-to-pixel basis. METHODS A two-step procedure was used to convert burn wound diagnosis into %TBSA. In the first step, images of burn wounds were collected and labeled by burn surgeons and the dataset was then input into two deep learning architectures, U-Net and Mask R-CNN, each configured with two different backbones, to segment the burn wounds. In the second step, we collected and labeled images of hands to create another dataset, which was also input into U-Net and Mask R-CNN to segment the hands. The percentage of TBSA of the burn wounds was then calculated by comparing the pixels of mask areas on the images of the burn wound and hand of the same patient according to the rule of hand, which says that one’s hand accounts for 0.8% of TBSA. RESULTS A total of 2591 images of burn wounds were collected and labeled to form the burn-wound dataset. The dataset was randomly split into a ratio of 8:1:1 to form the training, validation, and testing sets. Four hundred images of volar hands were collected and labeled to form the hand dataset, which was also split into three sets using the same method. For the images of burn wounds, Mask R-CNN with ResNet101 had the best segmentation result with a Dice coefficient (DC) of 0.9496, while U-Net with ResNet101 had a DC of 0.8545. For the hand images, U-Net and Mask R-CNN had similar performance with a DC of 0.9920 and 0.9910, respectively. Lastly, we conducted a test diagnosis in a burn patient. Mask R-CNN with ResNet-101 had on average less deviation (0.115% TBSA) from the ground truth than burn surgeons. CONCLUSIONS This is one of the first studies to diagnose all depths of burn wounds and convert the segmentation results into %TBSA using different deep learning models. We aimed to assist medical staff in estimating burn size more accurately and thereby helping to provide precise care to burn victims.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-34
Author(s):  
Fiera Avrillia Ferdianty ◽  
Santi Devina

Introduction: Burn injury is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in low and middle-income countries. Yet in Indonesia, the epidemiology of burn is rarely reported. The study aims to obtain the epidemiological characteristics of burn patients in Dr. Iskak General Hospital. Methods: A retrospective analysis study was used and the medical records of patients with burns admitted at Dr. Iskak General Hospital between January 2017 and December 2018 were collected and analyzed statistically. Results: A total of 80 patients were involved in this study. The most burn victims fell in the adult group (>18 years old), which was 56.3% (n=45). Children were six times more likely to sustain scald burn than adults (OR=6.75I; CI95% 2.47-18.41), meanwhile adults were three times more likely to sustain flame burn than children (OR=3.643; CI95% 1.186-11.190). Most of burn patients (91.25%) were treated surgically. The median of hospital stay was 8 days. Flame burn was the primary etiology for longer hospitalization and there was zero mortality in this study. Conclusion: We found that the adult group was at the highest risk of acquiring burns. Scald was the major cause of burns in children, while flame was the main etiology in the adult group that caused severe burn and prolonged hospitalization.


Author(s):  
Mohammad Ali Hoghoughi ◽  
Mohammad Reza Marzban ◽  
Mohammad Amin Shahrbaf ◽  
Reza Shahriarirad ◽  
Hooman Kamran ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Burn injury is a critical health issue, which is associated with several morbidities and mortalities. Substance abuse, which is an important public health problem in Iran, can affect burn injury outcomes and etiologies in victims. This study was aimed to evaluate different aspects of burn injuries in people who used drug (PWUD) in two referral centers in the south of Iran. Methods This Case-Control Study was conducted on burn victims referred to Amir-al Momenin Hospital and Ghotb-al-din Hospital from 2009 to 2017. Patients with a history of drug consumption were selected from the database and compared to randomly selected burn victims with no history of drug use. Demographics, burn etiology, underlying disease, total body surface area, hospitalization duration, and also the outcomes were collected and recorded in both groups. Data analysis was done by SPSS software. Results A total of 5,912 inpatients were included in this study, which 2,397 of them (40.54%) were female. The mean age of the patients was 26.12 ± 19.18. Drug history was positive in 659 patients (11.15%). Familial issues and mental disorders were significantly higher in the PWUD group compared to the control group (P<0.001). Explosion etiology was significantly higher in the PWUD group (P<0.001). Psychiatric disorders (P<0.001), total body surface area (P=0.023), and hospital stay (P<0.001) were significantly higher in PWUD; however, the mortality rate had no statistically significant differences between the groups (P=0.583). Conclusion Substance abuse is a risk factor in burn victims, which can affect burn etiology and burn-related morbidities.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 1496-1500
Author(s):  
Madan Prasad Baral ◽  
Sidarth Timsinha

Introduction: In developing countries like Nepal burn deaths are a major public health problem due to their increased mortality, morbidity and long-term disability. A few clinical studies on burns have been reported from Nepal however, autopsy based studies on burns are limited. Objectives: To study the socio-demographic characteristics of victims of burns and evaluate the cause and magnitude of fatal burn injuries retrospectively. Methodology: A two years retrospective analysis of burn deaths brought for autopsy was conducted from January 2017 to December 2018 in a central level hospital of Nepal. Results: Out of 775 total cases autopsied 38 (4.90%) cases were burn related deaths. The majority of the deaths 17(44.70%) occurred in the age group 21-30 years with a preponderance in females 22(57.89%). Majority of the victims were married females 25(65.78%) and most of them were housewives 14(36.84%). Flame burn 23(60.52%) was the most common cause of all burns. The Total Body Surface Area (TBSA) Burn between 50-69% was observed in majority of the cases 27(71.05%).Most of the victims 15(39.47%) survived over 10 days post injury. Burn incidents were mainly accidental 33(86.84%) in nature followed by suicidal burns 5(13.15%). The main cause of burn death was septicemic shock 16(42.10%) followed by neurogenic shock 10(26.31%). Conclusion: The results of this study show that burns injuries are mostly accidental in nature; therefore, the risks of burn injuries should be rightly addressed and appropriate burn prevention strategies should be developed to reduce the frequency and burn related deaths.


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