High-dose intravenous versus low-dose oral vitamin C in burn care: potential protective effects in the severely burned: a retrospective cohort study.

Abstract

The hospital burn database was used to obtain data on all patients with second-degree or deeper burns of 20% total-body-surface-area or greater. Fourteen patients were selected at random to receive a scheduled dose of 1250mg intravenous ascorbic acid every 6h for 72h. This was considered the high-dose group. During same period, 40 patients received scheduled 500mg oral ascorbic acid every 6h for 72h and this was considered the low-dose group. We gathered sociodemographic and clinical variables associated with ascorbic acid dosing. In our study, statistically significant variables were fluid requirements (p<0.001), hospital stay (p=0.011), length of time intubated on ventilator (p<0.001), colloids used (p=0.002), and total procedures required (p=0.014). Despite higher modified Baux predicted mortality in the high-dose group (10 patients vs. 24 patients, p=0.026) there was no noted significant association in days until the first infection and mortality rate (p=0.451 and 0.326, respectively). The calculated modified Baux predicted a higher mortality rate with the higher dosing group, yet this study did not find a mortality difference between the groups. We speculate that high-dose intravenous ascorbic acid may have protective effects in burn resuscitation. This finding may support some previous studies that found that high-dose ascorbic acid may improve clinical outcomes.