Burns : journal of the International Society for Burn Injuries
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Extensive hot water burns (HWB) are common at Red Cross War Memorial Children's Hospital (RCWMCH). The majority are caused by kettle scalds. These burn injuries usually affect toddlers living in poor socio-economic circumstances. The majority of these injuries are preventable. ⋯ The Kettle Strap is an acceptable, affordable device to improve kettle safety in the home.
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A 12-year retrospective review of severe burn patients who received cultured epithelial autografts (CEA) at the Singapore General Hospital Burns Centre from January 2005 to December 2016 was carried out. During this period, two different surgical modalities were employed to manage these burn injuries. In the earlier period, following early excision of the burn wounds, exposed surfaces were covered with a combination of split thickness skin autografts (STSG) and allografts. ⋯ The average area amount of skin allografts used per patient in the M/CEA group was significantly lower compared to the STSG/C method group which contributed to lower total average cost of grafts used per % TBSA in the M/CEA method group. This might be attributed to the presence of micrografts which seemed to improve stabilization of the wound bed resulting in less operating procedures and improving CEA take. To conclude, the M/CEA method introduced was able to treat more severe burn patients at lower graft costs without compromising critical clinical outcomes significantly.
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Majority of current research focuses on pre-hospital care in mass casualty incidents (MCI) whereas this study is the first to examine multifactorial aspects of intensive care unit (ICU) resource management during a surge in massive burn injury (MBI) patients whilst identifying key outcome predictors that resulted in successful disaster managements. ⋯ With ever increasing chances of terrorist activity in urban areas, hospitals can hopefully increase their preparedness using outcome-predictors presented in this study.
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Skin coverage remains a significant hurdle in large-sized burns. Recent advances have allowed to grow Bilaminar Cultured Skin Autografts (BCSGs) from patients' own donor sites. The aim of this study was to report long-term outcomes in patients with large-sized burns having received BCSGs. ⋯ This is the first report investigating the long-term outcome of a newly developed BCSG. BCSGs demonstrated comparable results with patients' autografts, functional outcomes on self-reported questionnaires and excellent psychological states. Precaution given the extensive unexpected hyperpigmentation must be taken and a randomized controlled study is underway.
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Rapid estimation of acute hand burns is important for communication, standardisation of assessment, rehabilitation and research. Use of an individual's own thumbprint area as a fraction of their total hand surface area was evaluated to assess potential utility in hand burn evaluation. ⋯ We have demonstrated how thumbprint area serves as a simple method for evaluating hand burn surface area.