Survival Function and Protein Malnutrition in Burns Patients at a Rural Hospital in Africa

Abstract

Urgent prevention strategies of burns and evidence-based practice with early nutritional supplementation are needed to reduce high rates of malnutrition and mortality.

mHealth for image-based diagnostics of acute burns in resource-poor settings: studies on the role of experts and the accuracy of their assessments

“…A few assumptions on the applicability of imagebased consultation for burns could be drawn from examining the distribution and management of the injuries seen in emergency care. To start with, burns are common in this setting and the type of burns seen at emergency centres are by and large similar to what has been presented previously in resource-poor settings: young children are overrepresented among non-fatal burns [51][52][53][54] and the burns are mostly of minor and moderate severity [51][52][53], except for a few reports of more severe burns among children [55] and adults [51]. Most burns are due to hot liquids and this is in line with earlier studies concerning children [51][52][53]55,56] but contrasts previous studies on adults where flame burns often are more common [36,51,57].…”

The effect of pre-existing malnutrition on pediatric burn mortality in a sub-Saharan African burn unit

“…On average, patients who lived had a mean TBSA of 14.6 AE10%, whereas those who died had a mean TBSA of 30.5 AE18% (p <0.001); survivors also had a longer length of stay (20AE23 days versus 12AE12 days, p <0.005). The median time to death from admission was 9 days [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19]. Independent variables associated with mortality were: %TBSA, mechanism of burn, and Zscore.…”

“…Because many burn victims do not seek medical attention in SSA, the true incidence of burn in the region is unknown [3,4]. However, in South Africa alone, 3.2% of the population is estimated to suffer burns annually [13]. Most studies show a predominance of the very young (under 5 years) in the SSA burn patient population [3][4][5]25].…”

“…Although the majority of admissions have a TBSA <30%, the overall mortality ranges from 10% to 26.8% [4]. Many reasons have been cited for this lag, including the lack of dedicated burn units, complexity and expense of specialized burn care, and the general scarcity of medical providers in the region [3,4,13,26]. Factors consistently associated with mortality in SSA burn patients are TBSA burned, age, mechanism of injury, and inhalation injury [3][4][5][26][27][28][29][30][31].…”

“…Optimization of nutritional status following burn is an essential intervention in high income country (HIC) burn units, where the prevalence of malnutrition in the general population is low. Interestingly, in LMICs, where baseline prevalence of malnutrition is much higher, there is a paucity of data regarding the effect of pre-existing malnutrition on burn mortality [13].…”