Burns : journal of the International Society for Burn Injuries
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Carbon monoxide (CO) is a toxic, color-, taste- and odorless gas with fatal consequences if undetected. Intoxication caused by CO is frequent possibly leading to a high morbidity and mortality. ⋯ Therefore the diagnosis and treatment can be very demanding. This article in detail reviews epidemiology, symptoms, diagnosis and the therapy of this multidisciplinary challenge.
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Social support and spirituality are important issues among burn survivors that appear to affect their posttraumatic growth (PTG). ⋯ The mediating role of spirituality should provide new visions for the augmentation of PTG in burn survivors.
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Global use of the internet has become commonplace, and smart phones have paved the way for technological mobility. Incorporation of smart phone technology has the potential to positively affect health outcomes through use of health-directed applications (apps), particularly for those patients living in medically underserved areas. The Bridge Mobile App for Burn Patients (fka: HealthySteps), is a pilot project that was developed to address the unique recovery needs of patients with major burn injuries who are being discharged from a regional burn center. ⋯ Original recovery-stage appropriate bio-psycho-social content, instructional videos and links to burn-supportive web sites are delivered directly to patients' smart phones for the first 90days following discharge. The primary goal for the Bridge App is to decrease unplanned hospital re-admissions, while supporting increased quality of life and resilience in short-term recovery. In addition, the Bridge Mobile App is designed to collect patient data reflecting pain, anxiety, mood, itching, medication compliance, social participation, self-efficacy and return to work on a password protected, HIPPA compliant, encrypted mainframe.
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A high prevalence of self-inflicted burn injury is noted in severe burn injury. It remains unclear as to whether gender and past psychiatric history impact upon whether injury is self-inflicted and the outcomes. ⋯ Psychiatric clinicians should assertively screen the psychiatric history of patients with severe burn injury, and participate in the acute and longer-term management of persons admitted with a self-inflicted burn.
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Accurate depth assessment of burn wounds is a critical task to provide the right treatment and care. Currently, laser Doppler imaging is able to provide better accuracy compared to the standard clinical evaluation. However, its clinical applicability is limited by factors like scanning distance, time, and cost. ⋯ Histological results obtained from trichrome staining were used as ground-truth. The combined performance of RS-OCT reported an overall average accuracy of 85% and ROC-AUC=0.94, in distinguishing the burn wounds. The significant performance on ex vivo skin motivates to assess the feasibility of combined RS-OCT in in vivo models.