PATTERN OF CHILD BURN INJURIES AND THEIR OUTCOME AT AaBET HOSPITAL

Abstract

Abstract Introduction: A burn is a skin and tissue damage caused by agents like fire, scald, electricity, chemical or radiation injury. Burn injury is a major global public health problem accompanied by a high risk of mortality and morbidity with over 310,000 annual deaths. Nearly 75% of burns in young children are due to scald burns. Infants have the highest death rates and large surface area of burn, inhalational injury, poverty, presence of sepsis imposes great factor for mortality and morbidity. Objective: To assess pattern of presentation of paediatric burn injuries and their management outcome. Methods: Hospital based cross-sectional study was used. Data was collected from patients chart and were cleaned, coded, checked for completeness and entered into SPSS version 25 for analysis. Descriptive statistics and logistic regression were used to analyze the data and graphical presentations were used to present the result findings. Results: Of the 218 paediatric burn patients admitted to AaBET burn unit, 71.1% had sustained scald burn due to splash of hot water while 20.2% of the patients are admitted due to flame burn. 53.6% of the patients had a 2nd degree superficial burn with upper extremity and trunk being the most common sites of burn injury. Around 38.2% of the patients developed acute complication the most common being sepsis of wound focus. 30.7% of the patient had developed chronic complication most commonly post burn contracture. A 3.2% of the patients died while being managed. Larger number deaths were found in children < 5years and in a patients with Major Burns. Conclusion & recommendation: The leading causes of burns in paediatric age group are scalds which are largely preventable. Children need due attention and care as they are easily exposed to burn injury when left alone at home especially in the kitchen. Keywords: paediatric, outcome, major burn, complications