Burn rehabilitation is an essential component of successful patient care. In May 2008, a group of burn rehabilitation clinicians met to discuss the status and future needs of burn rehabilitation. Fifteen topic areas pertinent to clinical burn rehabilitation were addressed. Consensus positions and suggested future research directions regarding the physical aspects of burn rehabilitation are shared.
Burn rehabilitation has been a part of burn care and treatment for many years. Yet, despite of its longevity, the rehabilitation outcome of patients with severe burns is less than optimal and appears to have leveled off. Patient survival from burn injury is at an all-time high. Burn rehabilitation must progress to the point where physical outcomes parallel survival statistics in terms of improved patient well-being. This position article is a treatise on burn rehabilitation and the state of burn rehabilitation patient outcomes. It describes burn rehabilitation interventions in brief and why a need is felt to bring this issue to the forefront. The article discusses areas for change and the challenges facing burn rehabilitation. Finally, the relegation and acceptance of this responsibility are addressed.
The objective of this review was to systematically evaluate the available clinical evidence for early ambulation of burn survivors after lower extremity skin grafting procedures so that practice guidelines could be proposed. It provides evidence-based recommendations, specifically for the rehabilitation interventions required for early ambulation of burn survivors. These guidelines are designed to assist all healthcare providers who are responsible for initiating and supporting the ambulation and rehabilitation of burn survivors after lower extremity grafting. Summary recommendations were made after the literature, retrieved by systematic review, was critically appraised and the level of evidence determined according to Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine criteria. A formal consensus exercise was performed to address some of the identified gaps in the literature which were believed to be critical building blocks of clinical practice.
After burn injury, scar contracture can cause significant impairment and functional deficit. Many studies have investigated the treatment and prevention of burn scar contracture, but few studies have focused on the methods for measuring contracture. The purpose of this study was to determine whether consistent and objective methods of measurement are used to quantify scar contracture in the clinical evaluation of burn patients and in burn research. A survey was administered to 407 burn therapists to determine the methods and tools used clinically to measure scar contracture, while a review of recent burn literature was conducted to determine the methods and tools used in burn research. The results of the survey indicate that there is a lack of consensus in the methods and tools used for the measurement of scar contracture, both clinically and in research. Instead, a variety of measurement methods was reported, each with varying degrees of objectivity. Clinically, the methods are rarely checked for reliability or performance competency. In burn research, the methods and tools vary, and contracture data obtained are often reported in an inconsistent manner. If the measurement of scar contracture is not done objectively and consistently, then it is difficult to determine reliability, validity, and responsiveness of the measurement methods. Development of standard protocols with reliable measures of scar contracture would improve the quality of burn care and research.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.