Advances in burn critical care

Abstract

Management of burn patients requires a complex interaction of surgical, medical, critical care, and rehabilitation approaches. Severe burn patients are some of the most challenging critically ill patients who may have multiple-system organ failure with life-threatening complications. To review and highlight some of the recent advances in burn critical care. We focused on some of the new treatment modalities in the management of respiratory complications, advances in burn resuscitation, management of the metabolic response to burns, and recent ideas in burn immunotherapy. A search of the MEDLINE database and manual review of published articles and abstracts from national and international meetings. DATA SYNTHESES AND CONCLUSIONS: The respiratory management of burn patients includes strategies to minimize iatrogenic injury with low tidal volume ventilation, to improve ventilation/perfusion mismatch, and to diagnosis pneumonia. Many aspects of burn resuscitation remain controversial, and the best form of fluid resuscitation has yet to be identified. Recent research in the metabolic response to thermal injury has identified many potentially beneficial treatments. Although immunomodulation therapy is promising, currently most of these treatments are not clinically viable, and further clinical and translational research is warranted.