A 1 year study of burn injuries in a British Emergency Department
Introduction
Burns are a relatively common cause of morbidity and mortality in the United Kingdom. Two hundred and fifty thousand people sustain burns each year in the UK [1]. One thousand people each year require formal fluid resuscitation [1] and there are 300 deaths from burns annually in the UK alone [2].
One hundred and seventy-five thousand people attend Emergency Departments in the UK each year with burns and 13,000 of these people are admitted for further management of their injury [1]. There is little published work available on patients presenting with burns to Emergency Departments. This study aimed to determine the number of patients attending an Emergency Department with burns and to establish the epidemiology, aetiology and outcome of these cases.
The Emergency Department of University Hospital Birmingham serves a local population of 433,000 people and treats approximately 79,000 patients each year. The hospital is also the site of the West Midlands Regional Burns Unit.
Section snippets
Methods
We carried out a retrospective study of all patients attending the Emergency Department during a 1 year period. The computerised patient management system was used to identify all patients with a presenting complaint of “burn” attending the department during 2004. Each patient's Emergency Department case notes were studied and patients who had not sustained some form of burn were excluded. A proforma was used to gather information on patient demographics, the cause and site of the burn, first
Demographics
Seven hundred and eighty-five patients presented to the Emergency Department during 2004 with a diagnosis of “burn” and this accounted for 1% of all Emergency Department attendances that year. Fifty-three percent of patients were male and the majority (77%) were of working age at the time of injury. These results are consistent with previous studies [3], [4]. The age distribution of patients is shown in Fig. 1. Only 11% of patients were under the age of 15 at the time of injury. This can be
Assessment and documentation
Assessment and documentation of burns was found to be generally poor. There was frequently no documentation of the cause, depth or size of burn or what type of first aid had been performed. This information is clearly very important in assessing the severity of the burn and determining further management of the patient. It is also important to get a clear history of the mechanism of injury and first aid measures taken in order to consider the possibility of non-accidental injury or to decide
Conclusion
Burns account for approximately 1% of attendances in this Emergency Department. Burns are most common in young males of working age and are most often due to scalds or flame. Most burns were small, superficial and managed conservatively as an outpatient.
Most of the burns treated in this department were potentially preventable. First aid measures taken by patients were poor and in some cases compounded by the use of inappropriate substances which may have worsened the injury.
Assessment and
Conflict of interest statement
None.
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