Pattern of unintentional burns: A hospital based study from Pakistan
Introduction
Burns is the fourth leading cause of death from unintentional injuries [1]. Unfortunately, due to poverty, substandard living conditions, overcrowding and illiteracy, burns are much more prevalent in low and middle income countries (LMICs) [2], [3].
In hospitalized patients, among all burn cases, predominance of unintentional burns has been reported by many studies [4], [5], [6]. A study conducted in Iraq reported that among all burn cases, 93% of cases were unintentional [5]. Similarly, studies from Pakistan revealed prevalence of unintentional burns as 84.6–99.23% [4], [6], [7].
In spite of limited resources in LMICs, the management of burn in these countries is much more difficult due to apathetic behavior of the people. Most of the uneducated families have faith in alternative system of medicine and utilize it with superstition, taboos or with weird religious rituals which make management and treatment of burn complicated [8]. These circumstances highlight the significance of primary prevention of burn in LMICs, particularly unintentional burns as which are mostly preventable [1], [9], [10].
Although studies have been conducted on burns and its risk factors, but majority of the studies were retrospectively reviewed observational studies and restricted to the pediatric burn patients only. For the same reason this study was designed to identify the determinants of risk factors which leads to unintentional burns in adults hospitalized patients.
Section snippets
Data collection procedure
A cross sectional questionnaire-based survey was conducted in Burns Centre of Civil Hospital, Karachi, Pakistan after getting approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of Dow University of Health Sciences (DUHS). The data were prospectively collected from all hospitalized patients with more than 18 years of age presented with unintentional burn from August 2013 to February 2014. Patients with intentional burn (suicidal, homicidal), mentally retarded and unconscious patients were
Results
A total of 324 patients had unintentional burn, of which 295 (91%) had unintentional burn by self and 29 (9%) had unintentional burn by other. The median age of the patients was 25 (22–31) years with no statistical difference between unintentional burn by self and unintentional burn by other group (p-value 0.67). The educational status was categorized into no schooling and primary or above as frequency of patients with no schooling found higher (44.13%). Predominance of male gender was found
Discussion
The findings of our study revealed increased rates of unintentional burn by self among hospitalized patients. It was notable that younger age, male gender and no schooling were predominantly higher with unintentional burns. It may be due to the reason that most of the patients had manual work occupation. These people are at high risk of getting higher severity of burns because most of the manual workers are less educated and did not take adequate precautionary measures when dealing with
Conclusion
Unintentional burn by self is considerably higher than unintentional burn by others in adults with male gender and no schooling as high risk group. Efforts should be undertaken to educate youngsters about factors that lead to the incidence of unintentional burns.
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