İsa Sözen1, Cem Emir Güldoğan1, Ahmet Çınar Yastı1,2

1Clinic of General Surgery, Burns Treatment Center, Ankara Numune Training and Research Hospital, Ankara, Turkey
2Department of General Surgery, Hitit University School of Medicine, Çorum, Turkey

Abstract

Objective: Burns are continuing devastating trauma worldwide. Most of the childhood burns are preventable injuries. Burns occurring as a result of inadvertence of the parents’/carers’ may cause mortality or life-long morbidities. Identification of the etiologies and causes will direct the precautions should be undertaken.

Material and Methods: Among patients admitting to our policlinics, 100 consequent patients included to the study. A questionnaire was filled with the information gathered from the parents/carers.

Results: The mean age of the patients was 3.74±3.07 years and 52% was male. Most of the injuries occurred at about the noon time (median 12:45). Seventy-eight percent of the burns occurred at own home. Parents/carers were close enough to prevent child from injury in 66% of the burns. While there was no first intervention in 21% of burns, 14% applied ice and 1% yoghurt. Taxi was the means to reach hospital in 45%. Hot liquids were the leading etiology (p<0.003). Sixty-two percent of the patients were dinning at the living room and on the floor.

Conclusion: Occurrence of the majority of the injuries near to the parents/carers is a consequence of inadvertence or lack of awareness. To decrease burns incidence among children in our country, dining at the floor and stove heating should be avoided as possible as it is. Not cooling burns with running tap water as soon as the injury leads deepening of the burn which consequently makes the management more complex. Regarding to our study, there is a clear need for determination of preventive measurements and to raise public awareness.

Keywords: Burn, child, awareness, etiology


 

Ethics Committee Approval

The study only includes the etiology of burns and do not include any sort of treatment. Also, all the parameters were gathered via past history of the injury. For this reason, an ethical committee approval was not obtained for this study.

Peer Review

Externally peer-reviewed.

Author Contributions

Concept – İ.S., A.Ç.Y.; Supervision – A.Ç.Y.; Resources – İ.S., C.E.G.; Materials – İ.S., C.E.G.; Data Collection and/or Processing – İ.S., C.E.G.; Analysis and/or Interpretation – A.Ç.Y., İ.S., C.E.G.; Literature Search – İ.S., C.E.G.; Writing Manuscript – İ.S., C.E.G.; Critical Review – A.Ç.Y., İ.S., C.E.G.

Conflict of Interest

No conflict of interest was declared by the authors.

Financial Disclosure

The authors declared that this study has received no financial support.