• Burns · Feb 2020

    Ablative fractional resurfacing for burn scar management affects the number and type of elective surgical reconstructive procedures, hospital admission patterns as well as length of stay.

    • Andrea C Issler-Fisher, Oliver M Fisher, Nicola A Clayton, Shivani Aggarwala, Peter A Haertsch, Zhe Li, and Maitz Peter K M PKM Burns Unit, Concord Repatriation General Hospital, Sydney, Australia; ANZAC Research Institute, Concord Repatriation General Hospital, Sydney, Austral.
    • Burns Unit, Concord Repatriation General Hospital, Sydney, Australia; ANZAC Research Institute, Concord Repatriation General Hospital, Sydney, Australia; University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia. Electronic address: afis8931@uni.sydney.edu.au.
    • Burns. 2020 Feb 1; 46 (1): 65-74.

    BackgroundReconstructive surgery remains the main approach to address burn scar contractures. Ablative fractional resurfacing is an increasingly popular tool for severe burn scar management, but its effect on overall burns reconstructive case-mix, operating time and patterns of hospital admission have not been reported.MethodsRetrospective analysis of hospital administrative data from September 2013 to June 2017 was performed evaluating these effects of ablative fractional CO2 laser (CO2-AFL).ResultsThe total number of acute burn patients treated at CRGH increased substantially over this timeframe, resulting in 412 elective procedures including 82 before and 330 after introducing CO2-AFL. The proportion of traditional non-laser reconstructive procedures dropped considerably to 23.9% in about 2.5 years following CO2-AFL introduction. This change in approach had a profound effect on LOS with average LOS being 1.96days for non-laser and 0.36days for CO2-AFL-procedures (p<0.001). Anaesthetic times also decreased significantly, with median durations at 90min pre-laser and 64min post-laser introduction (p<0.001), and median anaesthetic times at 87min (non-AFL) and 57min (AFL procedures) (p<0.001).ConclusionAFL profoundly affects elective reconstructive burn case mix with a replacement of conventional reconstructive operations in favour of AFL-procedures. This results in reductions of average LOS and anaesthetic times. Consequently, increased use of AFL in burn scar management could potentially reduce overall costs associated with burn scar reconstruction.Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd and ISBI. All rights reserved.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…