Epidemiología del paciente gran quemado adulto en Chile: experiencia del Servicio de Quemados del Hospital de la Asistencia Pública de Santiago

Abstract

(Rev Med Chile 2013; 141: 181-186).

Profile Of Burn Victims Attended By An Emergency Unit

“…The predominance of males found in this study is in line with national [9,11,[25][26][27][28][29][30][31] and international publications [13,[32][33][34][35]. By socially established gender differences and some personality characteristics, men are more exposed to risks both in personal and in professional life, which may explain their prevalence in this research.…”

“…In this study, most of the burns were accidental, as in other studies [25,34], and occurred mostly at home [25,27,32,24,38]. A considerable part of traumas and accidents occur in the home, an environment in which the individual feels safe and free of hazards, so they unconsciously adopt behaviors sometimes considered careless or negligent.…”

“…This is aggravated by the higher incidence of burns among young and economically active adults [25,27,32], which consequently increases the public and private, direct and indirect expenditure arising from this trauma.…”

“…There are also those which found the little burned as the most frequent [28,30] The extent of the injuries and trauma severity have a directly proportional relationship [9,41]. In this sense, research conducted in Chile found 43% of burned surface as the lethal dose 50 [32]. Burns are systemic traumas that, when extensive, are capable of interfering with the hemodynamic and immunity status of the patient, and they demand more invasive procedures and therefore increase the risk of infection.…”

“…As demonstrated in this study, flammable liquids, such as alcohol, lead this ranking [11, 25-26, 30-31, 36] and are associated with high morbidity and mortality rates, high costs and irreversible sequels. [37] Other studies consider the open flame as the main causative agent [9,27,29,32]. Hot liquids stood out when considering the children [11,27].…”