Burns : journal of the International Society for Burn Injuries
-
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have been instrumental in the treatment of traumatic injuries, including burns, particularly in low- and middle-income counties. The purpose of this project was to catalogue burn injury related NGO activities, describe coordinated efforts, and provide insight to burn health care professionals seeking volunteer opportunities. ⋯ To our knowledge, this is the first effort towards the establishment of a Burn-NGO catalogue. Challenges included: frequent shifts in geographical regions supported, lack of collaboration among organizations, availability of public information, and austere environments. We invite collaborators to assist in the creation of a comprehensive, interactive and complete catalogue.
-
Profound differences exist in the cost of burn care globally, thus we aim to investigate the affected factors and to delineate a strategy to improve the cost-effectiveness of burn management. ⋯ The majority of the cost were associated with the use of antibiotics and burns care. Consequently, it is crucial to prevent nosocomial infection in order to promote healthcare quality and reduce in-hospital costs.
-
Recent advances in burn care have resulted in the transition of care from inpatient to outpatient. There is a growing appreciation that with improved survival, meaningful markers of quality need to include recovery of form, function, and reconstruction. Capture of the data describing care delivered in the outpatient setting is being missed. ⋯ High quality databases serve to measure effectiveness of care and offer insight for areas of improvement. There is a clear need for inclusion of outpatient activity in the National Burn Registry (NBR).
-
Fractional CO2 lasers have been used in clinical settings to improve scarring following burn injury. Though used with increasing frequency, the appropriate laser settings are not well defined and overall efficacy of this therapy has not been definitively established. As it has been proposed that for thick hypertrophic scars proportionally greater fluence and thus deeper ablation into the scar tissue would be most effective, the goal of this study was to examine the role of ablation depth on scar outcomes in a highly-controlled porcine model for burn scars-after grafting. ⋯ The current study demonstrated that the properties of the ablative well (depth and width) are not linearly correlated with laser pulse energy, with only a small increase in well depth at energies between 70 and 150mJ. Overall, the study suggests that there is little difference in outcomes as a function of laser energy. Fractional CO2 laser therapy did not result in any statistically significant benefit to scar properties assessed by quantitative, objective measures, thus highlighting the need for additional clinical investigation of laser therapy efficacy with non-treated controls and objective measures of outcome.
-
Time to return to school in child and adolescent burn patients from a sub-Saharan tertiary hospital.
Africa, with the largest number of paediatric burns needs to focus more attention on paediatric burn survivors. Burn injury truncates schooling in child and adolescent burn patients. The aim of this study was to determine the time to return to school and factors influencing this in child and adolescent burn patients. ⋯ Time to return to school from burn injury and from discharge in child and adolescent burn survivors in this study are at least three times longer than previous studies. The burn care team needs to consider school re-entry programs for these children.